Public servants from the Immigration and Customs departments have a chance to look at their proposed new workplace, right in the heart of Canberra emerging "aerotropolis".
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Canberra Airport is moving on plans for a giant new building at its Brindabella Business Park as it continues its quest to lure the soon-to-be merged department and its 5500 Canberra-based public servants to the city's rapidly growing east.
The department's bosses have missed their own deadline to make a decision on the move, but the men behind Brindabella Business Park are continuing to position themselves to land the prized tenant, lodging a draft development plan for a 38,000 square metre, seven-storey building at 9 Molonglo Drive in the business park.
The Airport would not comment on the move, saying there was a commercial tender in progress, but the building next door, 3 Molonglo Drive, offers another 36,000 square metres of A-grade office accommodation and can easily be knocked into one behemoth office complex of the right size to fulfil DIBP's stated requirement.
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Landlords, the Snow family, are hoping the ability to offer all the space Immigration needs under one roof will give them the edge over the other players chasing the department's signature.
But the Airport is up against tough competition with several sites in Civic in the mix and Immigration's current landlords in Belconnen understood to be working hard to hold onto their huge tenant.
The new department is determined to have all Canberra-based public servants in one building and within 10 kilometres of Parliament House.
Belconnen businesses are increasingly worried that Immigration's 4000 public servants, and their estimated $41 million in annual retail spending, are heading out of the town centre.
The proposed offices at Molonglo Drive have another attraction – seven floors of underground car parking spaces with more available nearby, according to the plans released this week for a sixty day public consultation period.
The Airport owners are putting their best foot forward in the development application and tailoring their language to a very large tenant.
"The building will marry best-practice campus-style workplace principles within a master-planned landscaped precinct.
"This will create an internal and external 'village' for a tenant and provide for co-location, removing constraints of disjointed workplaces typical of older, smaller buildings," according to its Preliminary Draft Plan
"The opportunity for the connection of 3 and 9 Molonglo Drive is an important design aspect of this proposal."
The plan says that Brindabella Business Park is a key example of the emerging trend of the "aerotropolis", or centres of economic activity springing up around the nation's airports, a concept which has the support of the Abbott Government.
"Brindabella Business Park has been developed as Canberra's premier, and as one of Australia's leading, office parks consistent with the Canberra Airport 2014 Master Plan and the worldwide development trend of airports now acknowledged as 'Aerotropolises'," states the document.
But the Airport must overcome some political hurdles if it is to prevail in the race to build Immigration's new home with the ACT Government and Fraser MP Andrew Leigh making clear their opposition to the department leaving Belconnen.
The department itself refuses to comment, saying "the evaluation process" is not finished.
Correction: An earlier version of this story reported that plans had been submitted to the ACT Government's Land Development Agency. The document produced this week is a Draft Development Plan for public consultation.
