Look who’s moving in

Look who’s moving in

By Alison Kinkade

Docklands will experience an influx of corporate heavyweights in the coming months with the 717 Bourke St building now complete.

The Office of the Financial Ombudsman will be the pioneer of the building, moving 300 staff into level 11 and half of level 12 during September and will take up 4000sqm of office space.

BP Australia will join the Financial Ombudsman in November and is set to move in on Melbourne Cup weekend.

Insurance company Chartis, formerly AIG insurance, will also move in during November along with Telstra, which will stagger its call centre move over the full month.

Channel Nine has the signage rights to the building and will move in towards Christmas. This means it will join Channel 7, The Age and 3AW in Docklands – Melbourne’s new media hub.

The Commonwealth Bank has confirmed to Docklands News that it also has plans to open a bank branch in Docklands early next year.

The Commonwealth will join NAB, ANZ, Westpac, Bendigo Bank and the Bank of Queensland, which will open this month in Harbour Town.

Cbus property has also confirmed that it will develop an additional office for NAB, adjacent to Southern Cross Station and Etihad Stadium, at 700 Bourke St.

The 15-storey development, which is expected to be completed in mid-2013, will feature 61,000sqm of workspace, a childcare centre and a selection of retail and large open public spaces.

Construction on the new NAB building will commence in early 2011 and NAB will be the sole tenant.

RREEF Asia Pacific, which is the property investment arm of the Deutsche Bank’s asset management division, has been rumoured to be the likely purchaser of Equiset’s 737 Bourke St development.

Equiset’s director of property, Matthew O’Halloran, told Docklands News in late July that due to confidentiality requirements, he was unable to comment any further at that stage.

“Equiset Grollo Group ran an expression of interest campaign recently which yielded several serious proposals from a blend of domestic and international institutional investors seeking to purchase the property,” Mr O’Halloran said.

With completion of the 717 Bourke St building also comes the opening of a new footbridge, which connects the building with Southern Cross Station.

The footbridge opens soon and will provide public access to the south side of Bourke St from the current bridge, allowing pedestrians access to the building and to continue their journey further west.

Penguin Books is also rumoured to be moving to Docklands to lease approximately 8000 square metres of the yet to be renovated Goods Shed South, which is controlled by the Kuok-Walker group.   However a Kuok-Walker spokesperson said she had no knowledge of this.

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