Auction house gets a new life
The former home of renowned Wellington auctioneers Dunbar Sloane is set to take on a new life as cool, modern shared office space.
The five-level Dunbar Sloane building is being strengthened to 100 per cent of the New Building Standard and redeveloped by leading shared workspace provider, Generator, its first offering in the capital.
Generator is owned by big property player Precinct Properties, a specialist in developing and investing in Auckland and Wellington city centre office property.
Precinct has bought the character building at 30 Waring Taylor St, in the capital’s CBD, for $5 million, to redevelop it into co-working, event, meeting, and private office space.
Precinct chief executive Scott Pritchard said the company wanted to grow its shared space offering in the capital through Generator, which had 13,600 square metres of shared working space in four locations, at Britomart and in the Wynyard Quarter on the waterfront, in Auckland.
That was about half of Auckland’s coworking space.
The building will offer a little over 2000sqm and all up the acquisition, strengthening of the building and the refurbishment will cost about $25m.
It was also looking to put shared space into the stage two development of Bowen Campus, where it will be developing two new buildings with about 21,400sqm in total.
Generator could have 4000-5000sqm of space in the capital in a couple of years, Pritchard said.
Generator will inject new competition into Wellington’s fairly small co-working market, where the large players are Regus and Servcorp.
The city has about 6000-7000sqm of coworking or shared office space, compared to about 27,000sqm in Auckland.
‘‘Having owned Generator for a year now we believe it is the right time to respond to the increased demand for flexible workspace in Wellington and invest in its under-utilised shared workspace market,’’ Pritchard said.
A key part of its offering was hospitality and event space, which had proved popular in Auckland.
The design of the fit-out would use the character features of the building like high stud heights, timber, exposed bricks with modern design and amenities to deliver a very cool space, he said.
The shared office was in an ideal location for corporate and government occupiers.
The company was confident Generator would provide flexibility for these occupiers as well as small to medium businesses and individuals such as consultants. ‘‘We think there is pent-up demand.’’
The tech sector had a strong presence in Wellington for some time, with a number of startups.
There was also a lot of small to medium sized businesses and individual contractors doing work for the Crown who would be attracted to shared spaces where they could work, network, connect, and socialise.
The company had been surprised after it bought Generator at the demand from larger enterprises for co-working space, particularly for staff on various projects and for the creativity and flexibility of the environment.
The use of shared space by corporates and larger businesses was a trend overseas.
Precinct’s predominantly office buildings are in Auckland and Wellington and are 99 per cent occupied. It owns 15 buildings in the two cities.
‘‘The high occupancy levels Precinct has achieved across our portfolio reflects the strong demand for city centre office space in the markets we are invested in, Auckland and Wellington,’’ Pritchard said.
Precinct owns several large Wellington buildings, including the recently redeveloped Charles Fergusson building and Defence House, leased to Government agencies, on the Bowen Campus.
It also owns Mayfair House, Pastoral House, No 1 and No 3 The Terrace, the AON Centre, and NTT Tower.