News - Planning & development

In October, GCC petitioned ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope to defer sale of the old QEII hospital site on London Circle until after the federal election. Bob McMullan MP had already committed to getting federal government departments to decentralise out of Civic if Labor was elected, and Gungahlin desparately needs the jobs.

Mr Stanhope refused on the basis that if they didn't sell the land, some other private landowner would just seize the opportunity, although where exactly some private landholding of the scale of the QEII site exists in private hands in Civic is hardly clear...

Just days prior to the election caretaker period starting, then Finance Minister Nick Minchin signed off on the $40m deal that would see DEST located their headquarters to the site.

So now the election is over, and guess what department is being broken up? Yep - DEST.

So what will happen to the QEII site now? And is it really acceptable that the outgoing government should sign off such a massive deal mere weeks from an election?

The ACT Government media release on the sale follows...

QE II SITE TO BE DEVELOPED BY COMMONWEALTH AGENCY

The QE II site in Civic will be sold for a major new office building to house the Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training, Chief Minister Jon Stanhope has announced.

The Land Development Agency tendered for the DEST contract in partnership with Walker Corporation, which was selected to partner the LDA after a call for expressions of interest from developers interested in participating in commercial development opportunities with the Agency.

Mr Stanhope said that the QE II site would now be on-sold by the LDA to the Walker Corporation for $39.6 million. Walker Corporation would develop 40,000 m2 of office accommodation on the block for DEST.

'By partnering with Walker Corporation, the financial return to the ACT will be approximately double what the Territory may have received if the site had been sold as a stand-alone site without any development pre-commitment,' Mr Stanhope said today. 'While the LDA will of course continue to release commercial sites to the market for office space development, the Government will also continue to explore strategic commercial opportunities such as this DEST tender on particular sites, in order to maximise the financial return to the community.

'Offering a commercial site to a private-sector developer, such as Walker Corporation, with a pre-commitment by a large Commonwealth Department tenant, has the potential to attract a much higher price for the Territory, as the developer's risk is heavily reduced.

Now that the DEST tender has been awarded to the LDA, the land will be sold to Walker Corporation, which will construct and manage the development process without any further involvement from the LDA.  It is expected that Walker Corporation will commence construction before the end of the year.

Walker Corporation was selected to partner with LDA in the DEST tender on the basis of its compliance with published evaluation criteria and the value for money represented by its bid. The LDA engaged and utilised the services of a probity and legal adviser throughout the process, which was undertaken in accordance with required procedures.

Mr Lang Walker, Executive Chairman of Walker Corporation said, 'We are delighted in achieving such an outstanding result in collaboration with the Land Development Agency. This is an exceptional opportunity for the Group to design and develop a state-of-the-art workplace for DEST to meet with the Department's visionary design brief and ensure that its strategic plan for the Education, Science and Training sector is delivered over the years to come.'