Co-working operator Hub Australia to open new Sydney facility
Co-working operator Hub Australia has expanded in Sydney, taking over almost an entire building on Liverpool Street on the east side of Hyde Park.
The provider will take four of the five floors – or 4200 square metres in all – at 223 Liverpool Street, which is owned by European investor ST Real Estate.
For Hub Australia, the tenancy is a significant addition on its existing William Street facility, taking its Sydney footprint past 5000 square metres. With facilities in Adelaide and Melbourne, Hub Australia now has more than 10,000 square metres of co-working space in its national portfolio.
Founder Brad Krauskopf said the provider was moving towards bigger spaces, such as the 3900-square-metre facility it opened last year at the historic Mail Exchange in the Melbourne CBD, opposite a much smaller space in Bourke Street where Hub Australia had launched its first space in 2011.
Hub Australia founder Brad Krauskopf at the Mail Exchange facility when opened in Melbourne last year. Photo: Wayne Taylor
“As our business has grown and as our members have evolved, we’ve ended up with a real focus on growing businesses,” he told The Australian Financial Review.
“That’s meant that we’ve looked for a different site that what we looked at five years ago.
“With the larger site we can cater to growing businesses, whether they’ve got one or two people or 20 to 30 people, and everything in between.”
The larger sites allow Hub Australia to bring in more amenities. At the Hyde Park hub, which is being fitted out by Hassell, there will be a cafe, a rooftop terrace, meeting rooms and a gym.
There is synergy in Hub’s larger spaces and memberships, according to Mr Krauskopf. More users makes it possible to run more programs within the facility, while increasing the prospects for collaboration between members.
Hub Australia’s expansion is part of the broader growth within the emerging co-working sector. A survey last year identified the amount of space occupied by co-working hubs had increased a staggering 750 per cent in the previous three years in Melbourne.
“There is tremendous amount more of growth in the market,” Mr Krauskopf said.
“Co-working has been legitimised as not just a real estate option but as a business growth option for businesses of all different sizes.”
Knight Frank’s John Preece brokered the Liverpool Street lease, while Fidinam Real Estate represented owner ST Real Estate and Deloitte Real Estate acted for Hub Australia.
Mr Preece said that over the past 10 years the amount of co-working space across Sydney had grown from 1400 square metres to more than 44,000 square metres by October last year.
“We’ve seen a definitive trend towards more co-working facilities being opened within the CBD of a larger scale and higher quality,” he said.
The rapid roll-out of flexible office premises signals a longer-term change in the way work and business are being done. The rise of freelancers and starts-ups, coupled with technological change, a shift towards self-employment and the greater numbers of Gen Y workers are all factors.
US giant WeWork has joined that roll-out with a number of spaces in Sydney and its a new tenacy on Melbourne’s Collins Street to open later this year.
Another big player is WOTSO, contolled by ASX-listed Blackwall, which has more than 15,000 square metres of space in operation or development and recently expanded to Singapore.
