BHP in terrace move

Now that BHP Billiton has pre-committed to Multiplex Group’s proposed office tower on the Westralia Square site, the pool of large prospective office tenants left to pursue in Perth is limited.

Multiplex confirmed this week that BHP Billiton intended to move its Petroleum, Iron Ore, Stainless Steel Materials, Nickel West, Exploration and other corporate divisions into some 40,000 square metres of office space within its proposed 65,000sq m tower.

Multiplex missed out on securing BankWest to the project about 10 months ago, following the bank’s decision to take up 42,500sq m of space at the Raine Square redevelopment.

Major mining and resource industry players including Rio Tinto, Chevron, Worley Parsons and GHD are understood to be some of the remaining targets for Perth’s larger office developments.

If the significant Gorgon Gas project plays out in its favour on Barrow Island, property pundits predict Chevron could be the next biggest tenant to secure a leasing deal, likely to exceed 30,000sq m of space.

Worley Parsons, meanwhile, is tipped to bed down at Multiplex and Hawaiian’s Bishops See stage one tower shortly, alongside KPMG and Macquarie Bank. Rio Tinto is still on the look out for up to 5,000sq m of city office space and 2,000sq m on the city fringe for an operations centre.

Jones Lang LaSalle director of office leasing David Evans said Perth’s office market was still running hot and depending on the success of some proposed mining projects, a few professional services players could adjust their office space requests later this year.

“The number of large tenants left is fairly limited. I think it will be harder now for some of the larger projects to close deals quickly,” he said.

Subject to gaining development approval, Multiplex is expected to commence construction of the office tower in early 2008 with BHP likely to move there before the end of 2011.