Yarra council bids to buy $25m Richmond aged-care site from state
The 5,144 sqm former Riverside House has sat vacant since St Vincent's closed its psychogeriatric unit before 2020, and the council wants it for a dog park extension and a bigger children's centre.
The City of Yarra has started a first right of refusal process to buy the former Riverside House site at 2 River Street, Richmond, realestatesource.com.au reported on 22 October. The Department of Treasury and Finance declared the 5,144 sqm parcel surplus on 22 September.
Riverside House was a 30-bed psychogeriatric aged care facility run by St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne. The site has sat vacant since the hospital closed the unit before 2020. Like 43-67 River Street, the larger parcel Cbus bought last year, it has direct Yarra River access.
Yarra wants about 4,000 sqm of the site to extend Annettes Place, an existing dog park and playground with Yarra River frontage, and the remainder to expand the Yarraberg Children’s Centre by up to 50 places. An earlier council proposal sought $5m in state funding for the childcare expansion and $3m for open space and recreation works, according to realestatesource.com.au.
Why it matters
A surplus declaration usually points toward a sale on the open market. Here a council has stepped in first, seeking to keep the land public for a park and a children’s centre rather than apartments. For Melbourne developers bidding on state land, the test is whether the surplus process bends for a council with a community use, or runs through to market.
The request lands while the state is selling other surplus holdings. In August it sold the State Public Offices in the CBD for about $20m to a student accommodation developer, realestatesource.com.au reported. It also sold about 2 ha of the former Sunbury asylum site to the producers of The Block for $1m.
Private residential projects are already rising in Richmond, including Salta’s 476-apartment Riverline build-to-rent project. A private sale of Riverside House would add to that pipeline.
The numbers
realestatesource.com.au put the site’s value at about $25m. It based that on the $55m Cbus paid last year for 43-67 River Street, a 1.04 ha parcel that also has Yarra River access. Agency sources told the outlet the site could fetch closer to $30m if offered with a commitment to rezone it for apartments. The site sits about 5 km from the CBD, on the Hawthorn border. Neither figure is an official valuation, and the Department of Treasury and Finance has not published one.
Under an earlier proposal, the council sought $5m in state funding to expand the kindergarten and $3m for open space and recreation works. Those are funding asks, not a sale price.
What’s next
Yarra has asked the state government to pause the disposal process while the two sides discuss reserving the land for community use rather than taking it to market. Like all councils, Yarra keeps an open space reserve, funded by developer contributions on subdivisions, that can be used to buy parkland. No timeline for a government response has been reported, and no price or outcome has been agreed. If the state declines, the land moves on through the disposal process that the surplus declaration has already triggered. Until the state responds, the first right of refusal process that began with the 22 September surplus declaration remains open.