Vacancy rates tighten in Wollongong office market
Brendan Crabb
Another commercial or mixed-use tower could be required to meet the demands of Wollongong’s commercial property market, a southern Sydney-based group says.
St Trinity Property Group has a range of developments in the Illawarra, including Crown Wollongong (the former Dwyers site).
Crown Wollongong, a mixed-use development, has attracted two large commercial tenants to its ground-floor office space.
Infrastructure and environmental services company Cardno and stockbroking and wealth management firm Morgans Financial have taken up a total of 1400 square metres in separate deals at Crown Wollongong.
Nicholas El-Khoury, from St Trinity, said the leases showed that the Wollongong commercial office market was going from strength to strength.
He also said mixed-use developments woud help achieve a more vibrant and sustainable city centre.
There has been growing demand for Wollongong office space over the past 12 months, according to the recent Property Council Office Market Report.
The vacancy rate in Wollongong’s office space decreased from 11.2 per cent to 10.6 per cent, which the Property Council said showed a healthy economy and good prospects for local jobs.
Demand saw the vacancy rate in Wollongong continue to drop despite the addition of newly constructed office space.
Tony Donovan of Cardno said the company was attracted to Crown Wollongong because it had amenity and office space size availability that other commercial offerings had been unable to match.
They will have up to 120 staff working there.
“We chose Crown for our new Wollongong headquarters as it is very central to our client base and easy to reach for those that are not located in the CBD,” Mr Donovan said.
The space now leased to Cardno and Morgans had originally been earmarked as retail space, however, was snapped up and modified by the new leaseholders.
Mr El-Khoury said this was a sign of the commercial market’s strength and relative lack of supply.
“On the back of this demand from top-tier companies including multi-nationals such as Cardno, we envisage a very real market in Wollongong for potentially another commercial or mixed-use tower to answer this demand,” Mr El-Khoury said.
“This is basically a reflection of what we saw in the market over the past two years.”
He said of the newly announced commercial space within Crown’s lower levels, 40 per cent was still available for lease.
This story originally appeared in the Illawarra Mercury.
