Oscar Parry
The ex-Masters site in Sunbury has been listed for sale, reigniting local calls for it to be repurposed into a sport or entertainment facility.
The privately owned site, located at 3 Deveny Road, has been vacant since December 2016 when all Masters stores closed.
The site was listed for sale in October by Stonebridge Property Group, with public expressions of interest closing on November 28.
Sunbury MP Josh Bull has previously said he would like to see the site repurposed into a sporting facility and said this would be “an exciting and well-deserved outcome for the Sunbury community,” but “any plans around this would need to be supported by Hume council who are the responsible authority for local sports”.
“I am thrilled that this site is now being released to the market,” Mr Bull said.
“Regardless of the outcome, as a rapidly growing community, it is important that sizable and valuable assets such as the Masters site are utilised in a way that provides goods, services, and/or recreation to be enjoyed by the Sunbury community,” he said.
Sunbury resident Maggie Loveland said another possibility for the site could be that it is used as a performing arts facility.
“There needs to be a proper entertainment [centre] so that dance schools … can do all of their end of year recitals,” Ms Loveland said.
“We need something like that where we can have our own theatre companies … do their productions. We definitely need an entertainment precinct, and that would certainly be a great site to do that,” she said.
According to the Stonebridge Property Group listing, the site has a “highly flexible floorplate” spread over a gross lettable area (retail) of 13,645 square metres, and Sunbury “is expected to experience 4.04 per cent annum population growth and is undersupplied by large format retail uses”.
