ESR Australia has acquired a fully leased office and warehouse complex in Macquarie Park NSW for A$71 million ($54 million).

Anchored by Macquarie University’s School of Engineering, the fully leased site comprises 7,156 sq m of office and warehouse accommodation on a 1.5 ha site. The property is located adjacent to the Macquarie Park Train Station.

The asset also sits within the Macquarie Park Incentive Precinct which has been earmarked by the NSW Government to be accelerated as a key economic and innovation precinct.

Over the long term, ESR Australia is planning a staged redevelopment of the site into A-Grade office buildings.

“This landbank investment offers exponential opportunity as it provides holding income to allow a staged redevelopment. The area is well placed to capitalise on the changing office landscape with an increase in demand for decentralised office space since the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Phil Pearce, CEO of ESR Australia.

ESR Australia is a manager of industrial and business park real estate with assets under management of more than A$4.4 billion, and a robust pipeline of developments underway.

ESR Australia also has established funds management capabilities with long-term relationships with global institutional investors.

ESR Group is the largest Asia-Pacific logistics real estate group by gross floor area and by value of the assets owned directly and by the funds and investment vehicles it manages. The firm has approximately US$30 billion in assets under management across over 20 million sqm of real estate and land.

In March last year, the Warburg Pincus-backed global logistics real estate firm launched ESR Australia Logistics Partnership (EALP), a new Australian-focused, core-plus logistics partnership that seeks to raise A$1 billion (about $607 million) of equity.

Subsequently, in September, the firm agreed to sell a further 35% interest in EALP to a subsidiary of Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC.