Hospitality entrepreneurs Bruce and Chyka Keebaugh have snapped up an off-the-plan penthouse for around $10 million in Richmond, in Melbourne’s inner east, setting a price record for the hip suburb.
The couple, who founded one of Australia’s leading catering companies, The Big Group, in 1990, have bought the 550-square-metre penthouse that will top Carmine House, one of two residential buildings in developer Fortis’ $330 million residential, retail and hotel precinct, Richmond Square.
Chyka Keebaugh also gained considerable profile in the Victorian capital as part of the inaugural cast of The Real Housewives of Melbourne when it first aired in 2014, leaving the show after three seasons in 2016.
“We’re in the hospitality industry, so we entertain a lot,” Bruce Keebaugh told The Australian Financial Review. The couple bought two, three-bedroom apartments, combining them to create a “two-bedroom apartment with some really fabulous dining rooms and spaces to entertain”, he said.
“The positioning of the property was super important to us because it’s all about light and aspect. The outlook to the city was really important to us which is why we’ve got the top two floors of the building.”
While the price is undisclosed, it’s understood to have sold for close to double the price paid for the penthouse in Riverlee’s Jacques Richmond building, last purchased for $5.5 million in 2021, previously the suburb’s most expensive penthouse, according to property records.
The price of the Keebaughs’ new pad also surpasses the suburb’s overall record set by celebrity couple Hamish Blake and Zoe Foster Blake when they sold their Rowena Parade home for $7.435 million in 2021.
The Keebaugh’s inner-city bolthole is in addition to their home on the Mornington Peninsula and apartment in Sydney’s Potts Point.
“From a security point of view, there’s something very nice about apartment living,” Keebaugh said. “But the main thing that I think was important to us is to still have the scale of entertaining spaces and back-of-house kitchens and to have rooms on the scale and size that we’ve had in homes in the past, but in an apartment.
“We’re sort of not downsizing, we’re just doing the same thing in the sky. I call it a sky home.“
The Richmond Square sale follows two record-setting apartment sales in other developments by Fortis, which is part of the Pallas Group founded by directors Patrick Keenan, Dan Gallen, Mark Spring and Charles Mellick.
An off-the-plan penthouse in its Verano project in Rose Bay, in Sydney’s east, sold for $24 million in July, after Point Piper-based Rich Lister Neville Crichton paid about $50 million for the penthouse crowning Fortis’s Ruby House development in Double Bay in May.
“A lot of people do talk about residential buildings being lifestyle-led, but this truly is, in the fact that within that precinct, there are so many offerings at play,” Fortis associate director Avalon Nethery said. “There’s a wellness room, there’s the hotel, there’s all of the restaurants downstairs.
“People are starting to weigh up not just the square meterage of their apartments and what they can afford, but then also what else are they getting within that space?”
Alongside Richmond Square’s two apartment buildings, Carmine House and Wiltshire House, the development includes a 57-room hotel, an office space, and a mix of retail and lifestyle offerings.
The residential and retail parts of the precinct are expected to be completed by the third quarter of this year, while the hotel is scheduled to be built by the second quarter of 2027.
Christie’s International Real Estate Victoria director Sean Cussell brokered the deal between Fortis and the Keebaughs.
Catering to private function as well marquee events such as the Australian Open, the Grand Prix and the Spring Racing Carnival, The Big Group has grown significantly over three decades, now with around 2200 staff.
It has also expanded into permanent venues, including Ormond House and the State Library of Victoria, and more recently, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.
