The City of Geelong’s new Civic Precinct, named Wurriki Nyal provides 2,600 square metres of new community spaces, a sustainable and efficient City office and customer services centre and a second commercial building being developed by Quintessential Equity.
The Geelong Civic Precinct is a $220m partnership between the City of Greater Geelong and developer Quintessential Equity to develop and subdivide the 137 Mercer St site located in the heart of Geelong. The City owned portion of the development will consist of office accommodation for the City’s central Geelong based staff, public meeting and events areas, councillors offices, retail and landscape featuring central plaza and community space.
The newly name precinct comes from Wadawurrung words meaning “speak and talk together” and was decided through close engagement with the Wadawurrung Traditional Owners.
The development is heavily focused on sustainability with the City’s new office featuring a Cross Laminated Timber building structure, creating a light-filled, healthy, contemporary workplace for Geelong based employees.
The Cox designed precinct reinforces Geelong’s UNESCO City of Design designation and is targeting 6 Star GreenStar and 5.5 Star NABERS. The precinct will bring together City employees from seven central Geelong offices to drive collaboration, reduce costs and future-proof the City’s workplace needs. It is expected to save ratepayers over $2 million annually in energy and rental costs alone.
AECOM is working closely with the City in ensuring the success of this project across all engineering disciplines as well as architecture via sub-consultants Geyer. Having supported the City in development of the performance brief for the project and tender review our team is engaged in the ongoing technical advisory and peer review of the developer’s design proposals. The project has allowed us to engage with stakeholder groups and the design team to ensure compliance with the brief and drive best practice outcomes.
The client-side peer review role has been central to the success of this procurement strategy for the City and is testament to the ability for developer led projects to drive efficiency in program whilst maintaining a high standard of quality. AECOM brings to this project a wealth of experience in client side technical advisory and peer review of developer led projects and the collaboration required between client and developer to maintain positive relationships and project outcomes.
Construction on the Civic Precinct began in mid-2020, with project completion due mid-2022.
“AECOM have been outstanding on this project and a most valuable partner. I don’t think we could have done it without them. Well done to Nick and the rest of the team.”
Scott Annand, Project Manger at City of Greater Geelong.
