The world from the perspective of Melbourne's best suburb
I assume without quite knowing that Abbotsford was named after this place, Sir Walter Scott’s last home, Abbotsford House, in Scotland. Other Abbotsfords are to be found in Sydney, Dunedin, Johanasburg, British Columbia, and Wisconsin. That great hotel, the Rob Roy, may take its name from Scott’s novel of the same name. I just discovered the Rob Roy does accommodation from $25 a night with half-priced meals from the kitchen thrown in.
Signs have gone up on the long vacant and semi-derelict Denton Mills building in Nicholson St heralding an ambitious apartment development. I have no problem with it being turned into apartments — what else to do? — but hope increasingly pessimistically that some modern structure is not going to sprout out its arse: consider these words:
“Denton Mills will be a living masterpiece – featuring both the historic mill building, as well as a new modern [sic.] complex. The 3 storey mill building, which dates back to 1888, will be transformed into 39 unique apartments on the upper levels, and 9 commercial tenancies on the ground floor. A new structure, to be integrated with the existing mill building, will contain 72 contemporary apartments overlooking a courtyard featuring a 25 metre lap pool.”
If you have any intelligence on this development, let me know. If you want to participate in focus groups being arranged by the developer, call the Marketing Manager, Sandra Spencer, on 9328 0199. If you go, tell them we’d like a reasonably priced breakfastry as one of the 9 commercial tenancies. There are some more photos below, along with interesting bits about the Mills’ history.
Continue reading “Something is finally happening to the Denton Mills building on Nicholson St”
(Thanks to David Quigley of Newport, who only bought a camera last year, for the beautiful photo of Willsmere.)
Across the river is Kew, though for the purposes of this blog I have appropriated its parklands into greater Abbotsford. The Age has a suburb profile in it today with some interesting bits. The Age’s Domain’s suburb snapshots are slightly interesting: Kew is a suburb of 21,500 folks, while Abbotsford‘s population is only 4,025. Kew’s average house price is over $800,000, while Abbotsford’s average is about $440,000. But back to the profile in The Age today. Continue reading “Kew darling, our wealthy neighbour on the other side of the river”