Ice Works site to fall to Dragon apartment plan

THE long history of the Perth Ice Works building has come to an end with the Murray Street site to be developed into a new inner city residential development.

Dragon Properties, which has been operating in Western Australia for the past 18 months and whose most recent development project was The Island View development in Mosman Park, bought the 1,000sqm site in February 2003 for $1.1million.

Dragon Properties plans to develop a 29-apartment mid-range residential development on the site.

The well-known bright blue building with a polar bear on top had been home to the ice works for about 30 years and had produced ice on site up until a few months before its sale.

Selling agent Tony Delich from Knight Frank said at $1,100 a metre the Perth Ice Works site was good buying and would enable the developer greater flexibility in pricing the end product.

Sites on Colin and Ord Street are selling for $1,500 per metre.

“It is in walking distance of the CBD… I think they will do very well out of it,” Mr Delich said.

He said the area east of Havelock Street and the Mitchell Freeway had always been the poor cousin to Perth’s west end.

He said that projects such as ING’s development of the old Perth Metropolitan Markets had really given the area a boost and more respectability.

“The area has started to come into its own.”

The Perth Ice Works was one of the last remaining industrial sites in the area, however, former owner Mick Stroud moved the core business of the company out of the Murray Street site to Jandakot around six years ago and also had facilities in Greenwood, Welshpool and Bunbury.