Future Brisbane Icon Scales New Heights

Inertia’s Joshua Falco is one of the driving forces behind our work on a future Brisbane icon; The Midtown Centre. Located at 155 Charlotte Street, the project is set to become one of the most exciting and unique developments in CBD, as the two existing 20 storey towers, with common 3 level podium will be re-purposed to achieve a through laneway, combined floor plate and extend to 26 stories.

The completed development will deliver retail tenancies off the new laneway and up to 42,000 square metres of A-grade commercial space, and Rio Tinto has been announced as the flagship tenant of the marquee development.

Progress onsite is being made rapidly, having completed the first 18 floors to date with plans to reach level 20 by the end of the year. Joshua is currently liaising with four onsite teams responsible for the various packages of work from the basement level up.

“Midtown has been a fantastic project to work on and we are delighted with how progress is going. From concept to delivery Midtown is a unique project, as we take buildings and repurpose them to create a new lease of life, rather than the traditional approach of demolition and fresh construction,” said Joshua.

“As we head toward the end of the year the focus will be on maintaining progress, working with the developer and builders to ensure that we remain on track and provide best practice engineering support as the construction takes shape.”

“We will also see some unique developments in early 2020 as the Skygarden takes shape. The Skygarden will be a double-height, 360-degree open air space off a central atrium that extends to floor 26.”

“The Skygarden provides an amazing feature for the building, but it also enabled us to engineer the higher floors which we have effectively added to the building taking it to the new 26 story height,” said Joshua.

Inertia’s Engineering Principal, Phil Latham, praised the work done to date and the vision of DMC Projects, Ashe Morgan, Fender Katsalidis and Hutchinson Builders “The Midtown Centre is a fantastic example of how buildings can be re-purposed. As we see changes to working patterns, a move to more flexible working arrangement, the use of technology for remote working, there needs to be a change in thinking about future design and that will involve taking established buildings and giving them a new lease of life.”

“In a city like Brisbane, where construction costs are at the top end of the scale, this approach makes economic sense for developers and benefits the community by taking sites that could become outdated and unloved and turns them into cutting edge, modern structures. This concept also reduces construction time by 12-14 months allowing tenants to better plan for the future.”

Inertia’s involvement in Midtown covers pre-purchase due diligence, structural design, civil design and taking our ability to think laterally to ensure that the projects many unique elements could be achieved in line with the vision of the developers and architects.

Inertia’s Managing Director, Scott Clements praised the work of the team “Midtown is a huge project and I must acknowledge the efforts of Joshua, Ramon Gimeno, Ed Pigozzo and Kai Xu who have brought their passion and skill to the development and as can be seen the results speak for themselves.”