Redirect for domains

I've been in the SEO industry for long time ,- but never had to deal with high-ranking domains redirects, only for new sites when the overall effect war minor (301)

now I'm facing questions about 2 different high-ranking sites redirects ...-without any connection between the clients.

site 1 question:
want to redirect www.domain1-example.com (global) to country local domain :
www.domain1-example.fr
site is up for 4 years
Google PR (i know...) for homage and categories 4-5
more then 500,000 incoming links
Top position for 100's of keywords
high competitive field level in local language (not English)
ad theres is another catch- this local (www.domain1-example.fr) domain is already> 301 to this one: www.domain1-example.fr for the last two years

I want to use this global (.COM) domain in the future- in English for global clients
easy one -right ?

site 2 question:

home page set to directory (works the same has sub-domain for SE):
example.net/directory/
site is up for 3 years
Google PR (i know...) for homage -5
more then 1,000 highly imported incoming links
top position for 10-15 of local language single-general keyword (phones for example..)
low-medium competitive field level in local language (not English)
want to change to local name like www.new-domain.fr
-what about the catch ?
the site is on hidden upgrade process from CMS only to CMS+Community (the community need to be build up via forums...) and for the community build up the top positions for the single-general keyword is heavily imported.
so...should I wait with the 301> www.new-domain.fr or not ?

some interesting issues- I know...
help from someone with experience in these scenarios would be appreciated

site 1)
I would suggest parking the .com on the .fr site, and make sure you are using our non-www to www redirect in the htaccess file, and the .com will become .fr with no penalty.
This will direct any type-ins to .fr and keep .com from causing duplicate content.

In the future when you want to use it, you can simply unpark it and set up a real vhost for it.


site 2)
I would suggest not moving anything that is well-indexed and giving you good traffic.
You can do the same as above, and park the .fr on the .net or vice versa if you wish to move and take the re-indexing risk.