Billions of dollars later, Parramatta to hit 1 million square metres of office space

“I remember being there as a teenager and it was a place that looked like a country town, something like Tamworth,” said Ross Groves, the Property Council of Australia’s Western Sydney regional director. “But now it’s completely different. It has a real city feel.

“It’s gone from having an old 1960s council civic building at the centre to Parramatta Square, one of the largest commercial redevelopment projects in Australia. In the past 10 years, there’s been $10 billion of investment in the CBD and there’s still a huge pipeline to go.”

The new 28-storey office building at 32 Smith Street, the first tower encountered when entering Parramatta from the north and connecting the river to the city, is the latest element in its smart renewal.

Designed by architects Fender Katsalidis and owned by The GPT Group, it contains 27,200 square metres of space, with QBE as its anchor tenant taking 51 per cent of the net lettable area. The whole building is now 82 per cent let, with only three floors remaining, for which negotiations are underway.

“GPT’s philosophy is about creating the leading offices in the market and we are always looking for a quality differential,” said Jamie Nelson, GPT’s head of development, office. “We wanted to push the boundaries of the type of office available in Parramatta and we wanted to capitalise on the growth in that market.

“There’s been a significant infrastructure spend and we can see construction underway on the Western Sydney Airport and the government’s three-city strategy has centred Parramatta very much in terms of its importance as a commercial centre.”

At Fender Katsalidis, associate director Danny Mandrovski says the new tower was designed to respond to the urban environment, provide an elegant sculptural landmark to the city and supply excellent premium-grade office space to tenants.

Unlike most other towers, its bank of eight glazed lifts sit on the southern side of the building, rather than taking up a central core, to provide large open workspaces, and 360-degree views out all the way through and around the city and all the way to the Blue Mountains.

“We’re bringing the public into the space, visually connecting the street with the lobby and restaurant and cafe,” said Mr Mandrovski, of the design that saw it selected as the winning scheme for the site by the Parramatta City Council Design Competition Jury in 2017. “The core is made up of steel so you can see through the steelwork.”

The curved building has a three-level podium level and three floors of car parking above, with powder-coated aluminium battens that look like timber. There’s exposed concrete on the facade and timber-look sunshades, while it has a 6-Star Green Star rating.

No. 32 Smith Street is just a five-minute walk from another of Parramatta’s newest touchstones – the $2.7 billion Parramatta Square precinct on three hectares in the middle of the city. It has new chambers for the city council, a public library and a vertical campus for the University of Western Sydney, as well as four towers of 240,000 square metres of new office space and retail, and 10,000 square metres of public domain.

The development of the precinct has lured a number of companies from the traditional Sydney CBD, like some offices of the state government, the National Australia Bank, GT Insurance and Indesco, and at its completion later this year is predicted to be home to 24,000 workers.

Real estate and investment management firm JLL charted a strong positive net absorption of 68,000 square metres of office leasing activity in Parramatta in the fourth quarter of 2021 – the strongest quarterly demand result since the company started tracking the market in 1990.

“Parramatta will hit a significant milestone this year, reaching one million square metres of total office stock,” said JLL’s office leasing Parramatta senior director Stephen Panagiotopoulos. “This will be the first decentralised office market in Australia to reach this milestone.

“As an economic powerhouse, more businesses and people are gravitating from both suburban areas and Sydney CBD to this important employment and innovation hub. “

The next completion in the Parramatta office market will be 8 Paramatta Square, which will have 50,000 square metres of space, with pre-commitments from Westpac and Link Market Services, and 85 Macquarie Street with 10,000 square metres, some of which has already been taken by the Commonwealth Bank.

Other major infrastructure projects in the area include the Powerhouse Museum, the West Connex, Metro West and light rail lines, and the airport.