This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
BRISBANE’S CBD will need to accommodate an extra 11 towers the size of its largest building, 1 William Street, if it is to keep up with the projected office space needed by the 2032 Olympics.
It would mean the CBD would have to expand into areas such as Fortitude Valley, Spring Hill, and Bowen Hills, and potential activation of areas like Milton, according to Colliers’ Into the Golden Decade: Transformation of the Brisbane CBD report.
By 2032, estimations based on benchmarks from Melbourne and Sydney suggest Brisbane will need between 1.5 million and 1.9 million sqm of new office stock to accommodate projected population growth.
The state government’s ShapingSEQ 2023 plan is forecasting the region’s population to hit about six million by 2046, which would require about 900,000 for the additional 2.2 million people.
Over the past decade, Sydney CBD saw nearly 1.3 million sqm of new stock, and Melbourne over 1.4 million sqm.
“To accommodate future population growth we can’t fit into the CBD alone, we will see the CBD amalgamate with near city areas making the CBD a much larger footprint,” said Colliers’ Matt Kearney said.
“With 73% of the state’s population residing in SEQ, the significant correlation between population growth and the expanding CBD office sector in Brisbane is clear.”
There is just 205,700 sqm of office stock in the pipeline and a considerable portion – 70% – of this already pre-committed, while added with the cost of construction and a severe shortage of labour, “we have a situation where the office stock will not meet the projected white collar population if additional buildings do not enter the market” Kearney said.
Deloitte is forecasting that the professional, scientific and technical services, public administration and safety, as well as financial and insurance services will remain the top employers over the next decade accounting for 84% of the white-collar workforce
Brisbane has also demonstrated a larger appetite than most capital cities for working in the office following the pandemic lockdowns. Office occupancy in the CBD has most recently been tracked at 83% of pre-COVID levels by CBRE, with peak days hitting 87%.
Colliers’ Mitch Witherow said considering the current rental rates and the anticipated increases, it was highly likely that more businesses, especially those from the southern states, would take advantage of the opportunity to secure space in Brisbane.
“This is particularly true for larger corporations aiming to expand their presence in the state, given the city’s continuous growth in national significance,” he said.
Major institutions such as ANZ have shown increased interest in boosting the state’s tech sector by establishing a substantial tech hub in Brisbane and relocating a significant portion of their larger staff appointments to Queensland.
