The Dunbar Sloane building in Wellington central is being converted into co-working space

Thursday, 20 February 2020

Generator, owned by Precinct Properties, has four locations in central Auckland including this lounge and office space at Britomart.

The former home of renowned Wellington auctioneers Dunbar Sloane is set to take on a new life as cool, modern shared office space.

The five-level Dunbar Sloane building is being strengthened to 100 per cent of the New Building Standard and redeveloped by leading shared workspace provider, Generator, its first offering in the capital.

Generator is owned by big property player Precinct Properties, a specialist in developing and investing in Auckland and Wellington city centre office property.

Precinct has bought the character building at 30 Waring Taylor Street, in the capital's CBD, for $5 million, to redevelop it into co-working, event, meeting and private office space.

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Precinct chief executive Scott Pritchard said the company wanted to grow its shared space offering in the capital through Generator which had 13,600 square metres of shared working space in four locations, at Britomart and in the Wynyard Quarter on the waterfront, in Auckland. That was about half of Auckland's co-working space.

The building will offer a little over 2000sqm metres and all up the acquisition, strengthening of the building and the refurbishment will cost about $25 million.

It was also looking to put shared space into the stage two development of Bowen Campus where it will be developing two new buildings with about 21,400qsm in total.

The Dunbar Sloane building in Waring Taylor Street in the Wellington CBD will be converted into shared office space and earthquake strengthened over the next 18 months.

Generator could have 4000-5000sqm of space in the capital in a couple of years, Pritchard said.

Generator will inject new competition into Wellington's fairly small co-working market where the large players are Regus and Servcorp. The city has about 6000-7000sqm of co-working or shared office space compared to about 27,000sqm in Auckland.

'Having owned Generator for a year now we believe it is the right time to respond to the increased demand for flexible workspace in Wellington and invest in its under-utilised shared workspace market,' Pritchard said.

A key part of its offering was hospitality and event space which had proved popular in Auckland.

Precinct Properties chief executive Scott Pritchard says there is pent up demand for new shared office space in the capital where there is very low office vacancies.

The design of the fit-out would use the character features of the building like high stud heights, timber, exposed bricks with modern design and amenities to deliver a very cool space, he said.

The shared office was in an ideal location for corporate and government occupiers. The company was confident Generator would provide flexibility for these occupiers as well as small to medium businesses and individuals like consultants.

'We think there is pent-up demand.'

The tech sector had had a strong presence in Wellington for quite while with a number of start-ups while there were also a lot of small to medium sized businesses and individual contractors doing work for the Crown in the city who would be attracted to shared spaces where they could work, network, connect and socialise with other people.

The company had been surprised after it bought Generator at the demand from larger enterprises for co-working space, say for staff on various projects or for the creativity and flexibility of the environment. The use of shared space by corporates and and larger businesses was a trend overseas.

Precinct's predominantly office buildings are in Auckland and Wellington and are 99 per cent occupied. It owns 15 buildings in the two cities.

'The high occupancy levels Precinct have achieved across our portfolio reflects the strong demand for city centre office space in the markets we are invested in, Auckland and Wellington,' Pritchard said.

Precinct owns several large Wellington buildings including the recently redeveloped Charles Fergusson building and Defence House, leased to Government agencies, on the Bowen Campus.

It also owns Mayfair House, Pastoral House, No 1 and No 3 The Terrace, the AON Centre and NTT Tower.