Carlton’s Dan O’Connell hits the market

As Inner City News foreshadowed last month, Carlton’s iconic Dan O’Connell Hotel is back on the market – for sale or for rent – with real estate agents listing the landmark building on Friday, July 31.

Agents Harrington Earl said a review of assets by owner Fitzroy Community School (FCS) had resulted in the decision to “test the market” with regard to the building via “a combined sale-or-lease Expression of Interest campaign”.

The FCS board decision reflected “prudent governance” and a commitment to making sure the school’s resources were deployed to educational ends, Harrington Earl said, and would ensure the asset had “every opportunity to realise its full potential”.

As Inner City News has reported, the long-running alternative school bought the former pub for more than $3.2 million in 2020 after it was shut down as a result of COVID.

The school planned to turn the distinctive Edwardian building into a new primary campus for around 100 students, and it received a permit to do so from the City of Melbourne in January 2022.

The permit has since been extended twice and is due to lapse in January if the renovation hasn’t begun, with the project seemingly thwarted by the emergence, or re-emergence, of a series of allegations of physical and sexual abuse at the school, which have been reported by the ABC.

Comments from two legal firms dealing with claims of abuse from former FCS students suggest these allegations are extensive.

Margalit Injury Lawyers told the ABC they had been contacted by “numerous individuals”, while a lawyer from Grazia Legal told Inner City News the firm was dealing with alleged events ranging from the 1970s up until 2014 that included historical sexual assault as well as physical assault.

Victoria Police have said they are investigating allegations of sexual and physical assaults at the school’s North Fitzroy campus between 2009 and 2012.

A Victorian government spokesperson said that regulatory authorities had completed a recent “thorough investigation” into allegations, which resulted in strict conditions being placed on the school.

FCS’s founding family – Faye Berryman AO, her partner Philip O’Carroll and Faye’s sons Nick and Tim Berryman – have denied allegations of abuse made against them.

Harrington Earl Estate Agents director Steve Earl said that in the few days since the real estate board had gone up on the Princes St building, he had received several informal inquiries.

“We appreciate this is a property that carries significant history and evokes considerable community interest,” he said.

“Our responsibility is to conduct a transparent and equitable process that allows the market to determine the property’s value and whether its highest and best future lies in a commercial, residential or mixed-use outcome.”

“An Expression of Interest campaign provides the flexibility to explore opportunities that neither the [school’s] board nor ourselves may have previously contemplated.”

The pub’s location was one of its best attributes, he suggested.

Fitzroy Community School was contacted for comment but did not respond by deadline. •