[CAN] Bendigo & Adelaide Bank | 167 Pirie St | 49.5m | 11 lvl

[UrbanSG]

Looks like we may find out today where Adelaide Bank will finally decide to go as this article appears to have been written yesterday? (Correction I've just looked up the Annual General Meeting date and it's on Wednesday 3 Nov 2010)

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank yet to decide on $110 million Adelaide CBD headquarters
AARON MACDONALD
From: The Advertiser November 01, 2010 12:59PM

BENDIGO and Adelaide Bank will tomorrow decide the future of a $100 million headquarters development in the Adelaide CBD which has been in limbo since July.

An early-morning meeting before the bank's afternoon annual general meeting will be convened tomorrow to discuss the development, and an announcement is expected to be made during the annual general meeting.

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank senior public relations manager Lauren Treacy denies rumours the bank has rejected plans to build a new Adelaide-based headquarters.

"We're definitely still building in Adelaide," Ms Treacy says.

The bank received development approval in February to build a $110 million, 10-storey green-star office building at its current premises on Pirie St in Hindmarsh Square.

The original design, by Mariano De Duonni and Anna Fairbank of Adelaide architectural firm Hassell, passed muster with the State Government's Development Assessment Commission, and Melbourne-based superfund Cbus was slated to begin construction in April.

The bank then went to market in July with a request for a new building of about 17,000 sq m that met high environmental criteria to house the company's 900 employees and consolidate its three Adelaide offices.

Ms Treacy says the development will be similar to the company's Bendigo headquarters, built in 2007, which consolidated all the bank's employees into one environmentally-friendly space.

"It will be a five-star, green-star building that can accommodate all our Adelaide employees in the heart of Adelaide," Ms Treacy says.

"In a sense, nothing has really changed in what we are ultimately hoping to achieve, it is just a matter of whose balance sheet the building will sit on."

Construction will be completed within two to three years.

The announcement will come on the heels of Adelaide and Bendigo Bank's buy-out of debt-laden Elder's 40 per cent stake in Rural Bank for $165 million, about 1.2 times the shares' book value.

[frank1]

i hope they do something nobody suspects like saying their new headquarters will be in that proposed 22 lvl building at 51 pirie st