One of Wangaratta's largest industrial buildings that was originally built by IBM in the 1970s is up for sale with a price tag of $15 million.

Located on Shanley Street, the property footprint has a total site area of 66,960m2, building improvements of 15,702m2, and a permit approved for further development.

Mike Noble, director at Garry Nash and Co Real Estate, said the property was bought by Bathla in Sydney in March 2022 with plans to build pod bathrooms out of Wangaratta.

The company successfully applied for a permit to construct another 7000m2 building out the front of the existing building.

The company bought up a portfolio of properties after Covid, however, when the building industry was impacted by the tough economy it decided to put multiple properties on the market, including Wangaratta.

"They got in there and tied up the building and carried out a lot of cosmetic improvements to parts of it that hadn't been used since Solectron were in there prior to Bruck," Mr Noble said.

He said a lot of the activity in regional areas is being driven by the broader regional economies rather than out of Melbourne.

However, when Garry Nash and Co first had it on the market and sold it previously there was a lot of activity from metropolitan occupiers.

"There is three megawatts of power that goes into the building and it has its own substation," Mr Noble said.

"It could be appealing to a lot of the occupancies in Melbourne that don't have a decent power supply for manufacturing or other operations."

From a rental or occupancy cost perspective, regional areas are about half the price of metropolitan areas.

"Rent for the Shanley Street site would be around $80-$100 a square metre but it would be double that in Melbourne," Mr Noble said.

"Land tax is cheaper and there is still the 50 per cent stamp duty concession for commercial, industrial and extractive industry sales regionally and on this property it could equate to $200,000."

To rebuild the property, Mr Noble said the cost would be about $30m and the owners would like $15m to basically cover their acquisition costs and what they've put into it.

He noted that it would be a challenge for an investor to buy it and secure tenants as there are almost 16,000m2 under roof, however if the operator had a purpose to use most of it, there is greater potential to lease out the remainder.

If an already operating business views the property as fit for purpose it would be ideal as Mr Noble said land is at a premium and even if you had the land you couldn't build what's there.

A RICH MANUFACTURING PAST

The building originated when IBM arrived in Wangaratta in 1976 with the intention of manufacturing electric typewriters and the facilities at the Shanley Street site were constructed in 1978-79 where the manufacture of personal computers began in 1983.

At the time it was only the third plant in the world to produce IBM PCs.

IBM sold the facility to Australia's privately held Bluegum Technology in November 1997, with the Wangaratta workforce continuing to manufacture computers under contract from IBM, followed in 1998 by a $250m contract from Alcatel.

In June 2000 however, the high-tech manufacturing plant passed into foreign hands, acquired by the US-listed electronics giant, Solectron Corporation.

In a devastating blow to the city, Solectron closed the manufacturing plant in 2001, resulting in the loss of 220 local jobs.

Bruck Group acquired the facilities some years later to use as an Australian base for Wilson Fabrics, prior to selling the site to its current owners in 2022.