“We’re looking at the basements, how they’re used, how they’re accessed; we’re looking at the ground floor; we’re looking at the first floors; we’re looking at second floors – what’s in the podium?” he said.
“Then we get into the tower. Of course, if businesses and staff are going to want to come into the tower, the tower has to create an experience that isn’t available at home.
Interesting experience
“So the acid is on developers and investors to make sure that they are creating an interesting experience in the city centre, not only for employees but for visitors, for residents and for all Sydneysiders.”
As with most things, including the vision for Sydney’s planning future, Mr Jahn takes a long-term view of COVID-19, viewing it as a “major hiccup” that has accelerated trends and even brought benefits, such as potentially diversifying the commercial tenant base.
“For me, it’s not a structural issue,” Mr Jahn said. “It’s like you’ve been injured, and you’ve been hospitalised, and you go through a period of recovery and you can get on your feet again.
“A lot of people have reflected on COVID’s accelerated natural tendencies, and it’s bringing forward the need to solve other and newer problems.”
These include hybrid work and its disruption of the traditional five-day-a-week office culture, which led some to prematurely declare the CBD dead.
“There’s still a strong belief in the experience of the city,” Mr Jahn said. “That goes beyond planning and developing commercial office buildings, it goes to the heart of retail and entertainment.”
He said the strong future of the CBD could be seen in the decision by young, vibrant tech companies, some of which had made their fortunes enabling the work from anywhere culture, to get a city office.
“It’s interesting that the businesses which are into work flow [technology] such as Atlassian have really grown as a result of this accelerated situation, and yet they’re making their own decisions to locate and build in the CBD,” he said.
“There are more smaller and medium-sized industries that want to locate and be found in central Sydney, and I would suggest the aggregate demand exceeds the reduction from those large anchor tenants.
“That means there’s going to be much more diversity and much more activity in the medium to longer term.”
Looking ahead to 2036, the City of Sydney’s major CBD goals are to grow the number of workers and residents while increasing the amount of open space.
Initiatives include tower clusters, first mooted in 2016 before being introduced as policy across four parts of the CBD in 2020, where developers who accumulate at least 2000sq m of land can build towers of up to 330 metres high.
“We needed to look at how we can carve out more public space to match increased commercial space – it is fundamental to our vision of the future,” he said.
