By ANNA USHER

A heritage listed concrete fortress built in 1972 to house one of Australia’s most advanced banking computers is up for sale with a $35 million price guide.

The six-storey St Leonards Centre at 28-34 Clarke St (now called Oxley Corporate Office Centre) is being marketed as an “iconic Crows Nest asset” that sits inside the state government’s Transport Oriented Development rezoning, with a 62m height limit.

Eva Buhrich wrote in her Sydney Morning Herald column in 1973 that the building “looks like a science fiction film set dreamed up by an extravagant director, something from 2001 or Alphaville”.

“It must also be the most security-conscious building outside Long Bay,” she said.

The Commercial Banking Company of Sydney, known as CBC, built the St Leonards Centre as the computing hub for its Sydney branches, a decade before the bank merged into National Australia Bank in 1982.

Designed by Architect Geoff Malone of Kerr & Smith it was seen as an imaginative answer to the bank’s requirements as the industry began to automate transaction processes.

An example of the Brutalist style, the building featured open spaces, unobstructed by lifts, and a computer room that took up an entire floor.

“St Leonards Centre demands attention,” the bank’s 1972 launch brochure declared, “its striking sculpture suggests security, which is in keeping with the activities inside.”

The brochure placed a Honeywell 6000 computer on level eight, sealed off to employees and watched from a public viewing platform that could only be reached from level nine.

Staff members were required to wear ID badges – a first for the industry – with those cleared for the computer room photographed against a red background and everyone else against yellow.

“Gone will be such time consuming tasks as proving deposits, clearing cheques and posting ledgers, the tedious tasks of calculating fees, computing interest and preparing lengthy statistical returns, and the monthly task of getting out statements, forwarding balances and heading up new sheets,” the brochure said.

Two years before it opened, CBC advertised for “more girls to replace the ones who’ve just left to get married”.

The bank planned to link more than 100 branches, from Avalon in the north to Cronulla in the south, within 18 months, with 400 staff working three shifts around the clock.

The State Heritage Inventory calls it “a dramatically assertive building” with “a character of great and not totally pleasant strength”, adding: “It is a well-made and crafted building.”

Marketing material from agents Stanton, Hillier and Parker said the 1,236-square-metre site is one of only four properties sharing the same block as the Crows Nest Metro, with its Transport Oriented Development zoning making it a prime candidate for major redevelopment.

“This is an exceptional opportunity to secure one of the most strategically positioned properties on Sydney’s Lower North Shore,” it says, “offering a rare convergence of immediate holding income, flexible planning controls, and extraordinary transport connectivity.”

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