Sentinel spree rolls on

NT News | Camden Smith

THE Sentinel Property Group’s NT spending spree has continued with the $8.8m purchase of the two-storey Herbarium Building in Palm­erston.

The building, which is fully leased to the NT government, includes a climate-controlled archive for endangered plant species. 

Built on 940sq m and boasting 1510sq m of commercial of­fice space, the Herbarium building also has a tempera­ture-controlled research ac­commodation with an archive for 270,000 preserved botan­ical specimens, used for classi­fication and plant research.

The property is leased by the government until 2032 and is part of Sentinel’s Northern Australia lnvestment Fund, which also includes a cold store in Wishart. 

Sentinel chief executive Warren Ebert believes that the Territory and Northern Aus­tralia are an investment hid­den treasure and he is not afraid to put his money where his mouth is.

Other Darwin assets in­clude the CasCom centre and Jacana House, with the Group’s $400m purchase of Casuarina Square to be final­ised later this month.

“Sentinel have been highly active in Darwin over the past five years, and we think the Northern Territory has an enormous couple of decades ahead of it due to massive in­vestment in defence infra­structure and resource projects,” Mr Ebert said.

The Herbarium is close to the $300m Gateway Shopping Centre precinct and is leased by the Department of Environ­ment, Parks and Water Secur­ity on the ground floor and Correctional Services on level one. “There is very strong de­mand to purchase good qual­ity, well leased commercial property in the greater Darwin area,” Mr Ebert said.

“Due to the growing de­mand for investment proper­ties in the greater Darwin region, yields have compressed during 2020 and 2021 to as low as 5.3 per cent.”

According to the NT gov­ernment website, a herbarium is a “museum or library of plant specimens” and part of an international network dedi­cated to the study and identifi­cation of plants.