Real estate firm Goodman is planning to develop a new data center in Sydney, Australia.
The Urban Developer reports Goodman is planning to invest $1.4 billion in redeveloping the former ABC television studios on Sydney’s North Shore into a data center.
The real estate firm is reportedly preparing an Environmental Impact Statement for the New South Wales Department of Planning and Environment for a seven-story, 80MW facility.
The statement comes after the NSW government issued Goodman with industry-specific Secretary’s Environmental Assessment Requirements (SEARs) last week.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) sold the site, at 2-8 Lanceley Place & 14 Campbell Street in Artarmon, to Goodman for AU$90.5 million (US$58.99) in 2022. A lease-back arrangement with the ABC reportedly ended around 12 months ago.
At the announcement of the sale in 2023, Knight Frank said it had more than 100 inquiries and fielded 21 offers for the site. The property was exchanged in January 2022 and settled 12 months later in January 2023.
First opened in 1956 and known as Studio 26, the production site spanned more than 42,000 sqm (452,085 sq ft) across multiple buildings and had been in use for around 60 years. It was the site of the company’s main broadcast tower.
ABC relocated its HQ to Ultimo around 2003, and reports ABC was looking to sell the 1.4-hectare site surfaced in 2021. At the time Knight Frank suggested it would appeal to data center operators.
“We purchased the site because of its scale, and its location in a tightly held market,” Jason Little, CEO Australia at Goodman Group, said after the sale. “This is aligned to our strategy of owning assets in markets where barriers to entry are high, supply is limited, and demand is strong.”
Goodman aims to demolish the existing buildings to make way for the new data center.
“The existing developments on site are specialized to the ABC’s prior studio operations, and are not fit for purpose for market requirements,” Goodman’s head of planning Guy Smith wrote in a document before NSW’s director of industry assessment.
“The site provides strong strategic merit to accommodate the booming requirements for data center operators and hyperscalers, in a location that leverages immediately surrounding infrastructure and unlocks capacity to meet the demands for cloud data storage, enterprise uses, and AI (artificial intelligence),” Smith said.
Goodman is an integrated property group with operations throughout Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Europe, the UK, and the Americas. In the past 15 years, Goodman has delivered 600MW of powered sites and powered shell projects.
According to Goodman's CEO, as of November 2023, the company had 3.7GW of secured or potential power within its portfolio.
In April 2023, the company announced plans for a 100MW powered shell in Frankfurt, Germany. The company recently announced plans to expand its data center footprint in Japan and that it had broken ground on a new facility in Hong Kong.
