Perth’s tallest office building will get a splash of neon colour next month following a deal signed last week with Central Park tenant St George Bank to take on the lucrative signage rights.
Perth’s tallest office building will get a splash of neon colour next month following a deal signed last week with Central Park tenant St George Bank to take on the lucrative signage rights.
The bank will be the first company to have its name on the 52-level building and will join corporate heavyweights BankWest, AMP, Westpac and the ASX with signs high in the CBD skyline.
Two five-metre tall neon signs will be erected, one on each of Central Park’s south-east and north-west sides.
St George general manager WA Martin Barrett told WA Business News the signs would cost the bank more than $400,000 to have made and installed, not including the annual sign leasing fee, which he declined to reveal.
The deal was brokered by Jones Lang LaSalle for Central Park owner Perron Investments and does not include naming rights to the building.
“This is an opportunity to put St George Bank in a prominent position to increase our brand awareness. It’s a great time to announce our long-term commitment to Perth and the broader market,” Mr Barrett said.
The bank leases almost 8,500 square metres of space at Central Park, including a retail branch at ground level and space over the 11th and 12th floors totalling 2,824sq m.
It also owns financial services firm Asgard, which occupies 5,649sq m from the 37th to the 41st floors.
Signage deals have been rare in Perth in recent years, in part due to the lack of new office building construction and the expense of leasing and manufacturing signs.
However, in June last year, Lavan Legal announced its presence in the market with a sign on the established Quadrant Building at 1 William Street, paying more than $120,000 to make the sign as well as $100,000 a year to lease the ‘vertical’ space.
Most recent deals have involved BankWest gaining signage rights to the proposed Raine Square office development, and KPMG for Bishops See’s South tower.
Mr Barrett said the deal had come at the right time for St George, which was ramping up its expansion plans in WA by opening new branches in Joondalup, Fremantle, Kewdale, Mandurah and Bunbury from next month.
It was currently sourcing sites for an additional five retail branches for launch in 2009 as well as further ATM sites, he said.
Finding more office space for its growing Perth headquarters however, is another challenge, given that Central Park is fully leased.
Mr Barrett hopes that, when four of the proposed CBD office towers are completed in 2009, St George would have more room to move at Central Park. In the meantime it would look at refurbishing and reducing its employee space ratio, he said.
