Good News for IT Jobs in Christchurch, New Zealand with 'The Innovation Precinct' gaining momentum

The old McKenzie & Willis facade in High St will house Wynyard and at street level Joe's Garage Cafe

We listened to an interesting update on the 'Innovation Precinct' last night at the Canterbury Software Cluster which was attended by over a hundred IT professionals in Christchurch.

It was great to listen to short talks by Confirmed tenants:

Vodafone (900 Network/Infrastructure/Sales/Service Delivery/Account management/Call Center staff including an R&D Network lab with access to their GDSP)

Wynyard (150 R&D/Software Engineering staff)

Signal (New ICT Grad school - collaboration of the 5 tertiary providers in the South Island)

adding to other confirmed tenants.....

Kathmandu (150 head office staff including R&D, IT and a Concept Store)

and already up & running.....

Greenhouse (Tech Incubator including start up companies)

EPIC (The Original Enterprise Precinct & Innovation Campus that houses 25 tech organisations / software houses)

Amongst these anchor tennants are brew pub legends with 'the Dux Central', Pot Sticker Dumpling Bar (you may know them from The Colombo Mall), Brick Farm (craft beer/restaurant owners of ex-Smash Palace) and soon to come on board 'Sal's New York Pizza' and Joe's Garage Cafe amongst others.

Jamie Cairns, GM of Innovation, CDC talks at the 'Canterbury Software Cluster' last evening in Christchurch photo by Sunstone

Property Developer Patrick Fontein talked through other tenant opportunities from 50sqm to 150sqms in the $360 to $400 price range with decks, showers, toilets etc for smaller companies to be a part of the action. You can check out these 'Tenant Opportunities' here:

http://www.innovationprecinct.nz/tenant-opportunity-1/

A 2013 image from http://www.futurechristchurch.co.nz is becoming a reality

To see how the whole 'Innovation Precinct' fits into the Christchurch Central City Plan You can see more on the 'South frame' here:

https://ccdu.govt.nz/the-plan/south-frame

It's great to see some of the big players committing to the inner city of Christchurch and already with buildings up out of the ground this is a significant time for the IT industry in Christchurch to build on this momentum really putting us on the map.

Paul is founder of sunstonetalent.com an IT Recruitment & HR Consultancy based in Christchurch, South Island of New Zealand.

paul@sunstonetalent.com