By Tyler Wright
A local school has hit the market after closing its doors to the Monbulk community in December 2022.
Sutherland Farrelly Real Estate Director Paul Farrelly said the target market for Mountain District Christian School is larger schools looking for a second campus, or a school camp which could be created with modifications.
The 7.073 hectare property is located at 325 Macclesfield Road.
“The property has been established since the late 1970s and over the years has grown to a substantial facility that has been providing quality education to all ages,” Mr Farrelly said.
Improvements include classrooms suitable for a range of ages and class sizes, specific buildings for music, woodworking, arts and technology, performance spaces, food technology and canteen.
There are also sporting facilities including a sports oval, multi purpose hall/gymnasium, outdoor courts and a nature walking trail.
“The location’s fantastic… there’s a lot of buildings that anyone could repurpose or continue to use, and they were functional up until four or five weeks ago,” Mr Farrelly said.
“Someone could come in and start running a school there straight away.”
Mr Farrelly expects the school to sell for more than $3.5 million.
“I’ve had a lot of inspections… but there’s a lot of due diligence that needs to be undertaken before people actually go to that next step,” he said.
The Mountain District School board announced the Prep to Year 12 school’s closure in October 2022, citing financial difficulties predicted over the coming year as the reason for the shutdown.
The school operated for 43 years, with around 155 students enrolled in 2022.
“We’ve had a gradual decline of enrolments over the last number of years, and it’s meant we’re unable to sustain the operations as we would like to be able to,” former principal Jason Riding told the Star Mail in October.
“We didn’t want it to become an issue for us into the future, when we had a sudden closure because of financial issues, so we had to make a very sad decision to finish up at the end of [the] year.”
Expressions of interest for the sale close on 22 March 2023 at 3:00 pm.
