Government to move offices to the suburbs

This little item was buried in Saturday's Dominion Post, in the 'Commercial Property' section.

Obviously for the editors of the Dom this is a case of (almost)”terminal but unimportant”. One would think that government plans to vacate properties in the CBD of the capital and to move their offices out to Porirua and the Hutt Valley might just be of interest to thousands of public servants – indeed to the citizens of Wellington – (but we did report it')

Perhaps the government in addition to practising its extreme austerities is planning to see if it can create a Red Zone without a natural disaster,

It will prove Key right – it will kill off Wellington.

Wellington: Crown to shed hectares of offices

The Government's office cost - cutting drive will start to have an impact on Wellington CBD vacancy rates in 18 months to two years' time.

Stuff,

6 July, 2013

The forecast is being made by Jones Lang LaSalle Wellington leasing director Steve Rodgers as details are still being worked out on the first tranch of major departmental lease deals.

The government now occupies about 520,000 square metres - more than 50ha - of office space in Wellington. These offices are spread over 120 sites and it is estimated that the government occupies about 40 per cent of Wellington's CBD office space.

But it is looking to make major savings by reducing the space per worker from an average of 20.5 to 16sqm per worker.

Rogers said this suggested the government had 130,000sqm of under-utilised space in the Wellington CBD which could be shed without significantly impacting on the way departments operated.

The expiry of leases on 160,000sqm of office space in the next three years provided opportunities for the cuts to be made.

The drive to cut accommodation costs began last year when the newly established Government Property Management Centre of Expertise called for proposals to provide space for the ministries of Health; Social Development; Business, Innovation and Employment and the Crown Law Office.

These departments, which now occupy about 120,000sqm, would have their footprint reduced by about 30 per cent to 83,000sqm. Head offices were also going into refurbished, rather than new, buildings.

"It is clear also that the government no longer has any appetite for the rentals required to bring new office developments out of the ground of circa $600 per sqm."

However, it still had a sizeable accommodation requirement and departments needed large efficient office floors that offered good value for money.

It was also investigating options to relocate office functions that did not have to be in the CBD to Porirua and the Hutt Valley.

This raised the risk that even more of the city's older office buildings would be left vacant.

"There are a significant number of older buildings currently occupied by government in Wellington that simply won't meet their new requirements.

"Stock of this nature is likely to suffer, as are landlords that are not well capitalised or in a position to pitch for the larger mandates that government will now put into the market."

The Government was looking to adopt a generic standard of workplace to enable more flexibility for ebbs and flows of agencies, which made a lot of sense.

"This is a big ask, however, as it will require alignment of a number of factors, not least of which is their IT platform in order for this to work efficiently.

"I estimate that the impact on vacancy rates won't be felt for at least another 18 to 24 months as the government decants into temporary space whilst buildings are refurbished ready for the first tranche of agencies.

"This first tranche will ultimately look to reduce the office space footprint in Wellington by the equivalent of 37,000sqm. It will be a big step towards meeting their accommodation targets and in mitigating the rapidly rising property costs the public service faces," said Rogers