Amazon expands Sydney offices

The Seattle-headquartered Amazon is following a host of international technology companies that have rapidly increased their Sydney office footprint in the past two years in a boon for landlords in the city.

Amazon will be in the same building, at 2 Park Street, as fellow tech company Twitter, which agreed to lease 2000sq m in the building earlier in the year, up from the 400sq m previously.

Amazon, one of the largest online retailers in the world, will move from 55 Hunter Street, where it occupies 2400sq m.

The group took a single 800 sq m floor in the Hunter Street building in 2012.

It leased a further two floors a year later.

If the lease is finalised it would be another coup for the landlords of the building, GPT Group and the Charter Hall Office Trust, after a spate of deals in the tower over the past two years. QBE Insurance leased about 8000sq m in the Park St tower last year, while consumer goods company Unilever came in from the suburbs to make the building its headquarters.

Amazon could not be contacted. GPT, Charter Hall and the leasing agents marketing the building, Colliers International’s Cameron Williams and Daniel Price, declined to comment.

The Amazon deal follows a trend of technology companies moving to landmark office towers that have traditionally been occupied by financial institutions and law firms.

LinkedIn more than doubled its office space when it leased over 4000sq m in Charter Hall Group’s 1 Martin Place, which also houses merchant bank Macquarie Group.

Apple earlier in the year agreed to lease 6200sq m of space in the 20 Martin Place project, which is being developed by US giant Pembroke.

Amazon has expanded rapidly in Seattle, where it could lease close to one million square metres by the end of the decade, say US reports.

Google, Atlassian and Apple are also among the companies that eyeing significant expansions in the Sydney CBD.

This article first appeared in The Australian Business Review