New media meets old as Google said to be eyeing redundant Fairfax Media space in Pyrmont

Google, one of the few fast-growing office tenants in Sydney, might take a temporary sub-lease of any redundant space in the neighbouring Fairfax Media building at Pyrmont.

“The irony of such a move would not be lost on either the moguls of the new media or the flagship of the old,” Robert Harley, the property editor of the Fairfax publication The Australian Financial review, reported today.

Google declined to comment, as did the group’s real estate advisers CBRE, with the timing of any Google move or expansion not clear.

What is known is that the company will want a contemporary relaxed style of work space for its technology-savvy workforce.

The atmosphere will need to reflect the style of Google’s Mountain View campus in California, which has the stated aim of: “Our offices and cafes are designed to encourage interactions between Googlers within and across teams, and to spark conversation about work as well as play.”

Google’s lease in Pyrmont does not expire until 2018, but the AFR suggest in the long term four new projects have become potential locations for Google’s next office iteration.

They are listed as Lend Lease’s Barangaroo, Sekesui House-Frasers’ Central Park at the southern end of the CBD, the NSW government’s Australian Technology Park at Redfern and the reworking of the IMAX site at Darling Harbour by Grocon.

Central Park, opposite the University of Technology at Chippendale, will have a commercial building within its mixed-use precinct.

A spokesman for the Barangaroo developer, Lend Lease, advised the AFR that said the group was in negotiations with a number of potential tenants but would not give any specifics.

A new project on the IMAX site at Darling Harbour is also a possibility, although no approvals are yet in place.

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