Ex-Toowoomba Officeworks site on Hume St in CBD hits market through Cushman and Wakefield

Investors are reportedly falling over themselves to snap up the former site of Toowoomba’s Officeworks, with agents expecting it to go for upwards of $10m.

The former site of Toowoomba’s Officeworks in the CBD has drawn significant interest from investors, with expectations it could sell for more than $10m.

Noted Toowoomba investor Phil Collins, who owns major assets like the Range Shopping Centre and the Dalby Bunnings, has listed the 3900sq m property on Hume St for sale through national commercial agents Cushman and Wakefield.

The vacant freehold offer feature the 1800sq m building plus 44 on-site car parks.

Lead agent Daniel Cullinane said he had received more than 50 inquiries from across Australia since the campaign launched last week.

“We’ve had 50 or 60 inquiries in the first couple of days – it’s gone bonkers,” he said.

“We’re getting a whole range of people that are coming – we’ve got occupiers, we’ve got offshore groups, we’ve got the REITs (real estate investment trusts) from Sydney and Melbourne and we’ve also got a network of retail developers that are coming as well, and of course your high net-worth private investors.”

The site of the old Toowoomba Officeworks on Hume Street has hit the market through national commercial agents Cushman and Wakefield.

Mr Cullinane said the size of the property and the extensive lettable area opened it up to a range of possible future uses, after Officeworks moved to a new $32m centre on the corner of James and West Streets in Harristown.

“It could be anything – it could be another large-scale retail tenant, someone could do an office conversion, it could be a really nice medical centre as well,” he said.

“To have 40-45 car parks for a building in Toowoomba is going to be super sought after, so everyone’s really excited about the opportunity to try and repurpose and reposition this building.

“It’s going to go really well and it deserves to, it’s a bloody good property.”

Mr Cullinane said the sale would inject new equity into Toowoomba from outside the region, which could spur on further transactions in what he considered a potentially lucrative market.

The site of the old Toowoomba Officeworks on Hume Street has hit the market through national commercial agents Cushman and Wakefield.

“We work all throughout Australia, and I reckon Toowoomba is the best regional market in Australia,” he said.

“The drivers and the depths of the economy that you got is fantastic and a lot of investors are looking at it saying, ‘we want to buy more things in Toowoomba’ and that’s why I keep saying we’ve got to bring external capital back into the city.

“One of the biggest issues we’re finding is there’s just not enough property of scale – your $10m-plus – to be able to really meet that demand.

“Toowoomba is really going to benefit from the more external capital that we can actually bring into the market to help try and supercharge the property market there.”

Mr Collins, who has owned the property since 2014, was reportedly convinced to sell due to the nature of Toowoomba’s commercial market.

“We spoke to him, he wasn’t sure whether he was going to lease it or whether he wanted to sell it, but we said to him ‘there’s a fair bit of steam in the market for quality assets like this, we think you’ll get a really good price for it’,” Mr Cullinane said.

“He agreed, and he said he’d be keen to sell it.”

The expressions of interest campaign ends on June 19.

Originally published as Ex-Toowoomba Officeworks site on Hume St in CBD hits market through Cushman and Wakefield