Council’s Director Corporate & Economic Development John Francis said that it was good news that the Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development (DIIRD) was relocating 24 new jobs to University Hill and is set to commence operations in early 2010.

“Council has been keen to encourage businesses to relocate their corporate offices from the CBD and neighbouring locations to our thriving municipality,” Mr Francis said.

“Our local residential demographic profile clearly shows that a high percentage of our residents have the necessary skills and qualifications to meet the quality staffing needs of these corporates and this is only going to increase as the municipality’s population grows.”

Mr Francis said it was already great news that MAB had shown vision and made the investment into commercial office space at its University Hill Industrial Park and that this was now being followed by DIIRD.

“It has been proven before that investment in corporate office development will follow if a Government department or agency makes the commitment to establish an office in a suburb or regional centre,” Mr Francis said.

“It is therefore great news that DIIRD have provided this leadership vision and we congratulate them on the decision.

“As a Council we will now use this decision as leverage to attract further office/commercial investment into the municipality.”

The Victorian Government recently announced the new metropolitan Business Centre in Bundoora which will provide a full range of services and information to businesses.

“We always knew there was a need for high quality office accommodation in Melbourne’s north and DIIRD’s commitment to our ‘twenty enterprise’ office development is an endorsement of this requirement,” said MAB’s General Manager for Commercial & Industrial property Richard Johnston.

“The building is now 95 percent committed which brings over 7,300 square metres of new office occupiers to University Hill. We will now commence marketing of the third office building, ‘240 Plenty Road’, which has plans approved for a further 4,000 square metres of new office space.”