CO-WORKING OFFERS NEW PURPOSE FOR OLD BUILDINGS
The release of Property Council’s Office Market Report (OMR) last week re-confirmed that Perth’s office market vacancy is on a steady climb down as office vacancy rates dropped again, from 19.8% to 19.4%.
However, the next question now is how do we reactivate old office buildings in Perth CBD that remain largely empty and unappealing to tenants?
‘Adaptive reuse’ gets mentioned as a solution to bring life back to our B and C grade office buildings. The financial cost of retrofitting an old building can be significant and as Director of Studio Niz, Greg Niziskiotis said at the launch of the OMR, “Change of use is an option and will always be an option, whether it’s viable or not in a market like this I’d say probably not in short.”
“The opportunity is making improvements, high quality improvements that have a point of difference in a flooded market, to stand out and have your product ready to go and be more attractive than others,
“The focus should be on offering an experience that a premium product might not be able to offer. The tenant market is diversifying, flight to quality doesn’t always mean a flight to a premium product.
“Businesses will strongly align their business strategy with their building strategy, so they can represent effectively what they do, and that might not align with a premium product. That is where B and C grade buildings have the advantage.
“Quite often they have features and quirky structural elements that are appealing and good for marketing.
“There is a lot of untapped value in B and C grade buildings, if brought to the fore, such as additional lettable area – that can make the redevelopment of an existing building all the more viable.” He said.
Large, open co-working spaces are becoming an attractive solution to repurposing existing space in old office buildings. The concept of sharing workplaces has caught up with multi nationals, as well as small business and start-ups.
Co-working spaces are seeing old offices, shops and warehouses reborn as hubs for start-ups, entrepreneurs and innovators, spurring a rise in activity around them.
Chief Operating Officer of Hub Australia said the company purposely sought out heritage listed buildings as a “conscious point of difference” to other co-working spaces that wanted “A-grade office towers”.
Mr Preece said that architecturally there is a point of beauty to those buildings and tenants are drawn to their co-working spaces because of the unique environment, flexibility and sense of community they offer.
In Perth, Spacecubed are delivering just that. They have harnessed the opportunity to provide tailored coworking and office space including events and programs to a curated community of small businesses, sole traders, corporates and entrepreneurs all in existing buildings in the Perth CBD.
“The idea that offices are occupied by one large company seems somewhat redundant in the experience economy of Perth – and shared work spaces providing strong networks seem to be becoming more popular.” Said Mary Earl-Spurr, Spacecubed Marketing Coordinator in Perth.
Chandra Sundareswaran, Impact Manager from Spacecubed will be speaking at Property Council’s Innovation in Property event on the 15th of August. To view more information on the event, click here.