Union Square’s Building E open for business
The second office tower in Hamilton’s newest central business precinct has officially opened.
Dubbed Building E, the multi-level office space is the second of five builds that will make up Union Square, situated on a corner block that includes Anglesea, Hood and Alexandra streets.
The “long-burn” project would eventually combine 23,000m2 of office space with retail and community spaces including a wellness centre, said Rhys Harvey, Foster Construction’s development director and the overseer of the Union Square precinct.
“The master plan here is for five commercial buildings, plus the car park and end-of-trip facilities,” Harvey said.
Five-storey Building E is fully tenanted with the likes of software developers Company-X, accountants Baker Tilly, engineering consultants BBO, law firm James & Wells, and Harcourts NAI.
“At the moment, we’ve got about 550 people working in these two buildings. By the time we get it all built we could have 2500 people working here,” Harvey said.
One of the key benefits of Building E is the business centre, he added. It is made up of three meeting rooms and three conference rooms that vary in size, located on the ground floor. There’s also a kitchen tucked away behind one of the doors. The business centre is also open to the public to book.
The next development in the pipeline is Building B, which will wrap around the car park. “It’s consented and ready to go. We’ve just got to do some leasing on it before we can get it off the ground.
“All in all, we’ve got 30,000m2 of office space consented in the precinct. So we’ve designed 23,000m2 and we’ve got no height restrictions in the city, so we can sort of scale up and down as we as we go. At the moment, we’ve built just over 9000m2 of office space, which is fully let, 100% full.”
There are also plans for 18 retail shops at ground level, but Harvey said one of their key tests would be whether those stores made the lives of the people working in the precinct better. “So dry cleaners, hairdressers, you know, that sort of amenity that makes your life easier.”
On when the entire project was expected to be completed, Harvey said they were looking at 2028 to 2029.