Square, Afterpay plan to woo customers from a new Tech Central home

Inside Block’s Sydney headquarters.

Nick Molnar’s Afterpay is one of the first major tenants in Sydney’s Tech Central, a retrofitted brewery that looks out to the University of Technology.

The tech giant is making a home in Chippendale alongside its stablemates at Block, after several years in a WeWork shared office space on Pitt St in the CBD.

Sitting spaces in Block’s new Sydney headquarters.

Square, Cash App, TBD and TIDAL will all call the new Tech Central home as Square and Afterpay look to woo customers on the bottom floor of the new building, which will include information desks and help staff for Square customers.

Square hospitality customers will even be paid to come in and make coffee and the like for events, guests and staff from time to time.

Block has taken out a multi-year lease in the Brewery Yard, on Chippendale’s Central Park Avenue, the first tenant in almost two decades.

The heritage building, once the home of Kent Brewery, had been vacant since 2005.

In 2019, the site was bought for $16.5m by Block’s new landlord, the Melbourne-based IP Generation. The fund manger then redeveloped it into a modern complex, which it offered for sale for $140m this year, though it did not trade.

One of the original hoppers from the brewery.

Block had been negotiating the lease since the pandemic in 2021, and will move into the new building this week, where it will occupy three floors and about 2500sq m of space. The total office is 5791sq m.

Much like Canva’s office, there isn’t a desk for every worker, but 70 standing desks and ergonomic chairs in total across three floors.

Afterpay executive vice-president and country manager Katrina Konstas said she was confident that would be enough for the remote-first company which had 177 Sydney staff across all subsidiaries.

However, there are also spaces throughout the entrance and first two levels where staff can sit if necessary, Ms Konstas said.

Block’s largest workforce is in Australia, where 1051 staff work across the country.

The majority, 712 staff, work from Melbourne, while 53 work remotely across Victoria and 73 work remotely in NSW. About 46 other remote roles exist across the country.

Ms Konstas said in a not-so-distant future there would be general managers, chief technology officers and chief executives all bumping shoulders at Tech Central, which was set to be a powerful rival to Silicon Valley.

Inside Block’s new Sydney headquarters

“Being in an innovative hub like Tech Central, I think, provides the right type of creative environment for innovation and collaboration,” she said.

Inside the Brewery Yard, Block has built out a modern space, that’s light-filled and has a tonne of exposed brick, some of which is marked with existing and freshly painted graffiti.

While there’s no gym, there is a “reflections” room for yoga, meditation and other gentler sports.

Ms Konstas said when Block first began looking for an office several years ago, it knew it had wanted to avoid the centre of the city.

Inside the reflection room.

“Quite frankly, we were quite deliberate in our choice to not necessarily be in the hub of a CBD because we think that being on the fringe of those areas can also help stimulate a lot of local vibrancy that is critical in driving collaboration and creative thinking,” she said.

“I do think that it will definitely be the centre of innovation for a lot of businesses.”