Office Car Parks Turning Into Farms
Office Car Parks Turning Into Farms
By Carolyn Cummins
19 May 2018
The future-proofing of buildings has led landlords to trial a range of new ideas, with pop-up farms the latest way to utilize basements and potentially redundant car spaces when driverless cars arrive.
Industrial, retail, and offices assets are now being inspected by owners for their potential to offer green''living'' walls, community gardens and greenhouses.
Pat Barrett, the director of investment analyst at the UBS Property Securities Fund, said ''green walls" or vertical gardens are quite a common sight, as seen at Broadway's One Central Park, Sydney, but the next step in green developments could be "produce walls" or vertical farms.
Mirvac’s amateur farmers Linette Salbashian and Krishna Mohan learning about farming from Farmwall’s Serena Lee
Mr. Barrett said retailers could take their fresh food campaign to another level, literally, by growing fresh produce on their roof, perhaps greenhouses alongside the solar panels.
And carparks could be converted to massive urban greenhouses.
''Vertical gardens are quite a common sight, but could the next step be vertical farming? Growing produce vertically is not a new concept, with the Hanging Gardens of Babylon one of the first examples,'' Mr. Barrett said.
''Could we see produce walls rather than green walls? Could shopping centres take the fresh concept all the way with produce grown on their roof space? Industrial facilities could have farmers' markets inside or at the very least, be used as urban farms.''
In Japan, a firm called Spread has developed a farming system called "Techno Farm". Using hydroponics their facility produces about 21,000 heads of lettuce a day using floor-to-ceiling shelves where the produce is grown.
The seed planting is done by people, but the rest of the process, including harvesting, is done by industrial robots. This has reduced personnel costs by about half and reduced energy expenses by nearly one third.
Mirvac is one landlord that has sought to look at adaptive re-use of properties, with a pop-up arm in the basement of its EY property at 200 George Street, Sydney. If successful it will look to roll out the concept nationally.
GPT trialed a community garden at one mall in Melbourne.
Campbell Hanan, Mirvac’s head of office and industrial said it was about challenging the business to come up with ideas for re-using car parking spaces when driverless cars became common and didn't need parking bays.
''It is also about giving people reason to get together and seeing things grow.'' Mr Hanan said.
''Our staff go down to the basement at 200 George and enjoy planting and working in the garden and getting to know their fellow employees.''
Mr. Hanan said landlords must keep experimenting with ideas to find practical solutions for office towers of the future.
Mirvac has transformed the basement of the EY Centre into an urban farm under its Cultivate pilot program.
The Australian-first pop up urban farm is a partnership between Mirvac and Farmwall, a startup that creates natural, food-producing ecosystems in urban spaces.
Mr. Hanan said it was the brainchild of Mirvac’s innovation team Hatch and was born out of a project that set out to explore how urban spaces such as car parks, rooftops, basements and community areas can be better utilized.
''With over $10 billion of assets currently under management in our office & industrial portfolio, Mirvac is one of Australia’s largest asset managers and is always looking for ways to add value and enhance the experience for its customers,'' Mr. Hanan said.
''We wanted to think more creatively about how we can use these spaces to extract greater value for our clients through a unique offering.''
Geert Hendrix, Farmwall’s chief executive said the farm has started supplying some produce to nearby cafes, including Avenue On George cafe, and it can basically get from ''farm to plate in about seven minutes''.
The farm hosts veggie patches, a hydroponic vertical farm and a vertical ‘Farmwall’, each growing their own varieties of herbs and leafy greens. It also produces mushrooms, grown in coffee ground waste saved from landfill.
While this is its first office farm, Mirvac has incorporated a number of kitchen gardens into its residential communities, including community gardens at The Moreton in Bondi in Sydney and Harcrest in Victoria.