ANZ anchors new $430m Docklands tower

It will be developed by property giant Lendlease, which also completed ANZ’s 85,000-square-metre head office 10 years ago in Docklands.

Funds giants Challenger and US-based Invesco have come on board to invest in the 20-storey tower that will stand on the Collins Street extension into Docklands, overlooking the Yarra River. The fund-through was brokered by Colliers International’s Nick Rathgeber and Leigh Melbourne.

Securing ANZ as the anchor tenant is one of the biggest deals in Melbourne’s commercial property market in the past year.

The complex development deal was a major coup for Lendlease, which had considered several options for the vacant site before securing the ANZ tenancy and then the third-party investment.

For ANZ, the development is the last step in a sequence of moves that have allowed it to modernise and consolidate its property footprint around the country.

New tower

They include its decision to sell out of its Martin Place headquarters in Sydney – bought by Boston-based Pembroke Real Estate – and move into a new tower on Pitt and Castlereagh streets that was developed by Grocon.

In Melbourne, the bank last year also sold its former headquarters on Queen and Collins streets to GPT’s unlisted office fund for $275 million.

The Queen Street tower is home to ANZ’s institutional bank staff who will move to the new Docklands tower in 2019. ANZ will still retain control over its heritage home Collins Street, the so-called Gothic Bank building.

Kate Langan, ANZ’s general manager for property, has overseen these moves as the bank embraces more flexible ways of working.

 The bank’s 2000 staff in the new building will have customised office furniture.

ANZ will take up 26,500 square metres in the new 38,000-square-metre tower at 839 Collins Street. Its position next to the bank’s existing headquarters will foster a campus-style feel.

Standing at the point where Collins Street curves further into Docklands, it will appear as a visual bookend from further up in the city.

But it is what is inside the building that is even more important for the bank’s work culture and the 2000 staff who will occupy it.

Collaboration

“We’re using the opportunity of the new space to look at how people work and how different, diverse and collaborative teams come together,” Ms Langan told The Australian Financial Review.

Ms Langan and her team have worked closely with local manufacturers and designers, including Zenith Interiors, to customise office furniture, allowing staff to shape the space to suit their work demands in the new tower.

The design criteria mean most furniture will have wheels, be able to moved by one or two people, and can fit into a goods lift.

One result is the Go Desk, which ANZ has created with Zenith, that can be tilted and rolled away. Already ANZ has success with pilots of the new fit-out in other locations.

“We recognise that people come to collaborate with others and therefore the types of space that they come to are no longer traditional deskbound spaces,” Ms Langan said.

The new tower is the last major commercial site in the 30-hectare Victoria Harbour section of Docklands that Lendlease controls.

Kylie Rampa, Lendlease’s chief executive for property, said the precinct had the highest concentration of Green Star-rated buildings in the country and was now home to 15,000 workers.