Investa’s Barrack Place building in Sydney has become the first building in Australia to get WELL Core & Shell pre-certification, in a bid to attract an increasingly health and wellness-conscious tenant market.
The 18-storey building at 151 Clarence Street, which is due to be completed in late 2018, will comprise 22,000 square metres of A-Grade office space and retail.
To ensure WELL pre-certification, upgrades were made to the original building design and systems, according to Investa senior development manager Shen Chiu.
“New buildings provide a unique opportunity to deliver a healthy place to work from the ground up,” Mr Chiu said.
“The WELL Building Standard allows us to go one step further, by incorporating the science of wellness into the fabric of the building and locking in these benefits for decades to come.”
He said while there were individual tenancies with WELL certification, this was the first building to achieve Core & Shell pre-certification in a new development.
“Achieving this will allow tenants at Barrack Place to leverage certain aspects of the building’s design and services when doing their own space planning and our team will continue to manage the implementation to ensure it is carried through to WELL Certification,” Mr Chiu said.
Arup is on board
Global design and engineering firm Arup has already committed to making the building its new corporate headquarters.
Arup Australasian consulting sector leader Dr Marianne Foley said the company would also be chasing a WELL rating for the tenancy.
“Investa’s commitment to the WELL Core and Shell Gold pre-certification has significantly helped us in achieving this goal and further demonstrates the quality of the building,” she said.
“As a company we have a strong focus on overall employee health and wellbeing. In [Investa Office Fund] and Investa we have like-minded partners and in Barrack Place the ideal corporate headquarters for our needs.
Well done Investa (pardon the pun!) – it’s so good to see Australian companies taking a leadership role on health and wellbeing in the workplace. I wonder if WELL certification will attract a price premium for these spaces? Cheers, Sam
Arup have secured 7,700 square metres of space in the building.
Investa will adopt a holistic approach to embedding WELL certification standards across the building. We know from working with many organisations that are at different stages of embedding sustainability, health and wellness into their workplaces, that the most effective way to do this, is to provide the infrastructure, tools and information to enable tenants to make better decisions around how they design, plan, procure materials and utilise their tenancy, in alignment with their workplace strategy and budget.
Upgrading the base building to a Core and Shell Gold Pre-certification level provides immediate, quantifiable benefits to the tenants, even if they don’t pursue their own fitout rating. It also reduces many of the barriers that would otherwise exist for tenants who want to pursue a WELL fitout rating.
How much space is Arup leasing?
WillWill Investa mandate WELL for the entire completed building as well? This would provide the ‘walk’ beyond the ‘talk’ & a complete holistic occupancy experience & solution.