Big enough for King Kong: Animatronics company Creature Technology signs lease deal
A budding Melbourne art company which manufactures enormous stage-show quality animals and life-like animatronics for international arenas has signed a major industrial lease deal in Fishermans Bend.
Creature Technology – established 11 years ago – has committed to almost 8300 square metres at Goodman Group’s 461 Plummer Street, a warehouse within an enormous business park longer-term expected to make way for apartment skyscrapers given a landmark 2012 residential land rezoning.
Creature combines state of the art technology with “artistic mastery” to create products it hopes will inspire awe in audiences.
Last year, from its previous, smaller West Melbourne factory, the company manufactured a range of dinosaurs for the Jurassic World exhibition and the Melbourne Museum.
Its products have also appeared in stage shows King Kong, Walking With Dinosaurs and How to Train your Dragon.
The company recently created a 26-foot (eight-metre) animatronics puppet of the Statue of the Liberty for the Rockettes’ New York Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall.
Creature is paying a starting rent of $80 per square metre per annum for 461 Plummer Street, so its annual cost for the warehouse is just over $660,000.
General Manager Tim Rolfe said the company had to move from West Melbourne to a building with extra-high ceiling heights “to fit our creatures into”.
“Dinosaurs and giant apes tend to need a lot of headroom,” he added.
“We have gone through significant growth in the last few years as we have taken on working for the premium theme park sector worldwide, in addition to live productions and events,” Mr Rolfe said.
“We chose 461 Plummer Street because it is very central to our highly skilled and specialised workforce living all over greater Melbourne.”
Creature’s new headquarters sits on a complex between 437-481 Plummer Street (and spreading from Salmon to Graham streets) known as the Port Melbourne Industrial Estate.
Dinosaurs and giant apes tend to need a lot of headroom.
Goodman, with Knight Frank and CBRE, jointly market the varied office and industrial space that becomes available for lease at the estate, which has been a passive investment for the property giant.
However the site’s value, moving forward, will increase as a residential development site.
The property is not far from a Salmon Street office which sold to a residential builder a few months ago for $27.5 million – a substantial rise on the $12.5 million the vendors, investors, paid in 2013.
In January, local apartment builder Mario Salvo paid $41 million for a 9776-square-metre Johnston Street industrial site which vendor Vicland bought for $10.1 million three years earlier before obtaining a ministerial approval to build 1300 flats in four skyscrapers.
This deal valued the permitted land at $4193 per square metre.
Shortly afterwards it was reported electricity supplier Citipower had to outbid apartment builders and pay a rate of $5752 per square metre to buy a Fishermans Bend sub-station it had rented for decades, next door to the Salvo site.
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