Retail giant Harvey Norman is finalising a lease over a huge parcel of land at Jandakot Airport, opening the way for the construction of one of Perth’s biggest industrial warehouses.
Retail giant Harvey Norman is finalising a lease over a huge parcel of land at Jandakot Airport, opening the way for the construction of one of Perth’s biggest industrial warehouses.
If the deal with Jandakot Airport leaseholder Ascot Capital is successful, WA Business News understands a distribution centre will be built on a parcel of non-aviation land, thought to be as big as 40 hectares, which could supply Harvey Norman’s 14 metropolitan stores and eight regional locations across the state with furniture, white goods and computer equipment.
The possible addition of Harvey Norman to the precinct would be a major coup for Jandakot’s emerging 148ha business precinct, ‘Jandakot City’, which is slated to include more than 500,000 square metres of commercial, bulky goods and showroom retail, light industrial and warehouse space.
Jandakot Airport director property, Leo Seward, would not comment on the negotiations with Harvey Norman, except to say the airport was fielding interest from several prospective tenants for its business park.
Mr Seward said construction had already begun on its first warehouse project at the park, a 12,000sq m facility for Stainless Pipes and Fittings Australia, which is expected to be completed by June next year.
The first of its planned eight A-grade office buildings of 4,000sq m is also under construction, with about half of the space already pre-committed.
“Some people see Jandakot as a sandy, banksia grove at the moment, but once we get the critical mass and amenity down there through development, it will be an enormous attraction to the area,” Mr Seward said.
Ascot Capital secured the 99-year Commonwealth lease over the airport (totalling 622ha) in 2006 and has since embarked upon a $1 billion re-development and upgrade.
When completed in the next 10 years, the new developments are expected to help boost the airport’s workforce from 900 to 6,000 people.
Both Jandakot and Perth Airport have become legitimate fringe office locations in the past year as rising rents in the Perth CBD and West Perth squeeze many tenants out.
The airports have also been thrust into the spotlight as ready sources of industrial land, in what is arguably Perth’s tightest industrial market in decades.
Perth Airport is ahead of Jandakot in the leasing stakes, however, securing supermarket giant Coles Myer in September last year to Perth’s biggest design-and-construct industrial project – a regional distribution centre of almost 73,000sq m.
Charter Hall is developing the $100 million Coles project on a 25ha site at the KewLink East estate, opposite Perth Mint’s distribution facility AGR Matthey.
Perth Airport also negotiated a lease-back arrangement with Woolworths, on a 65,300sq m distribution centre on Horrie Millar Drive.
