Thinking outside the square of suburban office

The deal included relocating Servier’s office space to Garda’s state-of-the-art building at Botanicca Business Park in Richmond.

In the northern suburbs, developer Amber Property, had to get very innovative when it couldn’t lease out a ground floor 1005 sq m office-retail space beneath its recently completed 120-unit apartment development, Newbury Preston.

Amber set up its co-working company WORK and filled the space with desks.

The office at 33-43 Plenty Road, Preston recently sold for $4.9 million through Stonebridge agents Rorey James, Nic Hage, Max Warren and Sarah Xi.

“The developer’s decision to offer the property with a leaseback ultimately paid dividends, with four offers received at the close of the expression of interest campaign,” James said.

Meanwhile, owner-occupiers are still out there taking advantage of low-interest rates to snare their office.

Technology company Oberix Group has paid $8.12 million for a suburban office building at 21-29 Miles Street, Mulgrave.

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The vacant 1744 square metre office, which has room for 73 on-site car parks, was sold freshly refurbished by the vendor, a private investor.

The deal was negotiated by Colliers’ Alex Browne and Peter Bremner who said there was a lot of interest from owner-occupiers.

“Interestingly, developers saw value in the land and investors were prepared to take on the vacancy risk to secure the property. There were offers from all three buyer profiles,” Browne said.

Oberix Group is relocating from McIntyre Street in Burwood.

The company’s founder Trevor Owen said he was really excited about the future and the way the new office will help attract new talent to the business.

“The next step for us is relatively simple, we want to transform this asset into a smart carbon-neutral building which then can be used as a showcase example of how to revitalise suburban office space,” Owen said.