Public service bosses at the Department of Social Services want to spend $55 million on a ''gold-plated, Rolls-Royce'' fit-out job for their new offices in Canberra’s south.
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Parliament is being asked to sign off on a fit-out bill that is up to twice the standard commercial rates to make the department's new HQ, which will be rented as a shell, fit for occupation.
Long-awaited details of the department’s new Tuggeranong property deal also show hundreds more public servants will join the exodus from Woden as part of the Department of Social Services' new office deal, in another blow to the town centre's ailing economy.
The department wants Parliament’s Public Works Committee to approve spending of $1800 a square metre for the new 30,000 square metre Greenway office block, to be built next door to the department’s present accommodation in the crumbling Tuggeranong Office Park.
The going commercial rate for a standard office fit-out is no more than $900 a square metre. Local property industry figures approached by The Canberra Times on Thursday scoffed at the Department of Social Services' budget.
''If that is just for the fit-out, it’s gonna be gold-plated, the Rolls-Royce of fit-outs,'' one industry insider said.
The department says the fit-out will provide high standards of security, energy efficiency and workplace technology, as well as creating more than 400 local jobs before the public servants take their seats in late 2016.
In its submission to the Parliamentary Public Works committee, the department says some of the $55 million cost will be met through lease incentives provided by landlord Cromwell Property Group, which also owns the Tuggeranong Office Park.
The deal to keep thousands of public servants in Tuggeranong is a coup both for Cromwell and for the struggling town centre, but bad news for Woden after the Department of Social Services revealed its plans to walk away from about 4500 square metres it occupies at Aviation House and Corrina Street.
The news is a fresh blow for Woden, which is also facing the loss of the departments of Veterans’ Affairs and Environment as well as hundreds of ACT public servants.
The northern section of the once-thriving town centre is already beset by tens of thousands of square metres of empty offices in derelict 1960s blocks, failed retail and hospitality business and closed federal government shopfronts.
Despite the lauding of the Tuggeranong deal by local MPs as an economic triumph for the town centre, the Department of Social Services has resisted detailed scrutiny of the arrangement.
On Thursday, the department’s media unit refused to answer a number of questions about its new office block and fit-out. Instead, a statement was provided.
''About 2200 staff from the Department of Social Services will remain in Tuggeranong in new accommodation after the Tuggeranong Office Park lease expires in 2016,'' the statement read.
''This provides certainty for staff about their long-term work arrangements, as well as for Tuggeranong businesses and the local economy.
''This investment will achieve significant long-term savings – more than $7 million per annum from 2017.''
