Mirvac and its consortium partners, AMP Capital, Sunsuper and Centuria Property Funds have opened the doors to the first two buildings of its revamped tech and innovation precinct at Sydney’s South Eveleigh.
Formerly known as the Australian Technology Park, South Eveleigh will serve as home to tech companies including existing tenants such as Data61, Cicada, and Cisco.
The first completed building, Axle, will be home to Commonwealth Bank and 10,000 of its employees. The bank was chosen as the tenant as part of a deal worth $263 million, after the state government rejected an Atlassian-led plan to make South Eveleigh its headquarters as the foundation tenant of a startup technology precinct.
The second complete building, Yerrabingin House, features community centre, gym, childcare and the Australian-first Indigenous rooftop farm.
Mirvac chief executive Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz said South Eveleigh would be an “environment for collaboration and exchange”.
“Pioneering new standards in commercial campus design, South Eveleigh is a place for workers and the people of Sydney to connect culturally, socially and physically,” she said.
“The precinct has generous public shared spaces, community facilities, public artwork, retail, sports courts and oval, skate park and a focus on innovation, housing some of Australia’s leading technological companies.”
The opening of the buildings marks the ongoing development of the South Eveleigh precinct that is on track to be finished by 2020.
Once complete, South Eveleigh will have nine commercial buildings and be surrounded by shared public spaces with a mix of retail.
Construction is now scheduled to start on the refurbishment of the Locomotive Workshops this month. Mirvac’s co-working company Hoist is expected to take up residence within the building when it’s completed.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s second workplace building, The Foundry, will be complete in mid-2020.
In conjunction with revamping the precinct, Mirvac announced it will launch a $2.1 million innovation and technology incubation fund in 2021.
South Eveleigh is expected to eventually form part of the New South Wales government’s plans to turn the stretch from Central to Eveleigh into “Australia’s Silicon Valley”, Gladys Berejiklian had revealed in August last year.
The state said it would work with Australian tech giant Atlassian, co-working space provider Fishburners and industry group TechSydney to develop part of the precinct.