Google’s Fairfax takeover
There’s a fascinating move happening in Pyrmont’s media quarter with the ‘death star’ of the ad industry Google taking yet another floor of Fairfax’s headquarters.
Fairfax’s Sydney HQ. Source: Wiki Commons
It takes the search giant’s room in the building to three of the five floors there.
And whilst you may be right to think of this as a sign of the times – traditional media being annexed by new online platforms – the reason for the move is actually more interesting…
Fairfax will be able to put its entire workforce into a monorail carriage soon.
I imagine it would be like that film Snow Piercer, except they circumnavigate the planet looking for the last few readers of newspapers to stave off total extinction.
Domain have already moved buildings.
Thanks Kate, we’ve updated the Mumbo to reflect this.
Cheers
Nic – Mumbrella
Poor form Mumbrella. If you’d done your homework you’d know Domain have already moved.
It’s definitely important to ensure that people are aware that the many redundancies currently happening across fairfax have nothing to do with this story.
@Soon – no one saw that movie (because they still read newspapers)
So, build a big building to get all of Fairfax in one place, instead of some in Darling Park office towers, some in finger wharves at Pyrmont, some out at office space at Chullora, etc.
Then spend another small fortune of the next couple of years to remodel, cos the Digital people’s offices looks too schmick and fancy and the print people got the shits.
Then remodel again to make it open plan so bosses sit with the teams instead of behind glass.
Then, a few years later, move Domain out all on their own, despite having a 5 storey building with shitloads of space.
All since May 2008.
*sigh*
It does rock compared to Real estate, which is clunky and slow.
Fragmentation of the office footprint is simply the corporate equivalent of the good ‘ol ‘divide and conquer’
@Trevor: close, but not quite right. The Darling Park offices were gold plated. But the move to Pyrmont was because that lease ended. About the same time chairman walker imposed his vision via the ridiculously expensive Age building in Melbourne. (Walker also was hands on in the Sydney move, right down to shifting floor plans on the executive level). But the Domain move is definitely queer unless there is a plan to try to float it before the property market goes south. Of course that would leave Fairfax with not much bar an expensive board and executive team.
Well Domain are going south anyway. Despite all the marketing they are still number 2 to REA and always will be.
Having just moved from London, I love how Australia still support Murdoch’s empire with realestate.com.au despite the phone hacking scandal. Only down under….
@Numbers: Close, but not quite right either.
Farifax (under Hilmer) renewed the Darling Park lease circa 03-04, and well & truly paid overs. From memory it is 15 yr lease.
Walker came on board and had the ‘great’ idea of sub-leasing DP and pay less rent at ODI, therefore negating somewhat the exorbitant rental costs.
However what eventuated was that Fairfax committed itself to Mirvac (ODI), and CBA negotiated the down to the extent that the sub lease income was less than what the ODI outgoing rental was, meaning Fairfax was in actual fact paying more in workspace rental.
Seriously, you couldnt make some of this crap up if you tried
All true IN. The other huge irony is today’s big bank bash angle in the fin, which castigated westpac for capitalising opex. Coming from Fairfax this is hysterically funny and not unrelated to the matters outlined here.