Hurstville has a new addition to its CBD, and this one’s a bit different from the usual bubble tea shops and real estate offices that tend to fill vacant shopfronts on Forest Road. A purpose-built tech and startup hub called Southern Foundry opened its doors on Monday, taking over two floors of the old Westpac building at the corner of Forest Road and Queens Road.

The idea is straightforward. Give southern Sydney’s growing population of tech workers, freelancers, and early-stage startup founders a reason to stop commuting to the CBD every day. And based on what I saw at the opening, there’s clearly demand.

What Southern Foundry Actually Offers

The ground floor is set up as an open-plan coworking space with around 60 hot desks, a dozen dedicated desks, and four meeting rooms of varying sizes. There’s a podcast recording booth — which seems very 2026 — and a small events space that seats about 80 people.

The first floor is where it gets more interesting. There are eight private office suites designed for startups with teams of three to ten people, plus a shared “maker space” with 3D printers, electronics workbenches, and prototyping equipment. That’s a genuine differentiator. Most coworking spaces in Sydney offer desks and Wi-Fi. This one is clearly pitched at people who build things.

Pricing is competitive with other southern Sydney options. Hot desks start at $299 per month, dedicated desks at $499, and the private suites range from $1,800 to $4,500 depending on size. Day passes are $39.

The fit-out is clean and modern without being try-hard. Lots of natural light, decent acoustics (they’ve clearly spent money on sound treatment), and the Wi-Fi is on a dedicated business fibre connection — not shared with the building’s other tenants.

The People Behind It

Southern Foundry is backed by a group of five local investors, all of whom have ties to the St George area. The managing director, Priya Nair, grew up in Penshurst and spent fifteen years in tech startups in the city before deciding she was tired of the commute.

“I kept meeting incredibly talented people from this area — Hurstville, Kogarah, Rockdale, Beverly Hills — who all made the same trek into the CBD every morning,” she told me at the opening. “The talent density in southern Sydney is actually really high. What was missing was the infrastructure.”

She’s not wrong about the demographics. The Georges River Council area has one of the highest concentrations of technology and professional services workers outside of the CBD, North Sydney, and Macquarie Park. Many of them commute an hour or more each way.

Early Tenants Are Already in Place

A few of the private office suites were occupied before the official opening. One is a fintech startup with four staff building payment processing tools for small retailers. Another is a two-person software development consultancy that previously worked from a home office in Allawah. A third is a digital marketing agency that relocated from Mascot to be closer to where most of its team actually lives.

The coworking desks are filling up too. I counted about thirty people working on opening day — a mix of freelancers, remote workers, and what looked like a couple of small teams doing collaborative work.

There’s a deliberate community angle to the space. Southern Foundry is running free monthly networking events, a mentoring program connecting experienced founders with first-timers, and weekly “lunch and learn” sessions covering topics from business registration to AI tools for small business.

What This Means for Hurstville

Hurstville’s CBD has been in a slow transition over the past decade. The retail mix has shifted significantly, and there’s been a lot of hand-wringing about empty shopfronts and the decline of traditional retail. What’s been less discussed is the opportunity.

The area has excellent transport links — Hurstville station is a major T4 and T8 interchange, with trains to the city, Cronulla, Bankstown, and the airport. There’s parking (not as much as anyone wants, but still). And compared to anywhere north of the harbour, commercial rents are genuinely affordable.

“We’re paying about 40% less per square metre than a comparable space in Surry Hills,” Priya noted. “And the commute for our members is ten or fifteen minutes instead of an hour.”

That cost advantage matters for startups. When you’re bootstrapping a business, the difference between $4,500 a month and $8,000 a month for office space is significant. It can mean hiring one more person, or extending your runway by several months.

The Broader Southern Sydney Trend

Southern Foundry isn’t the only sign of this shift. Cronulla has seen several coworking spaces open in the past year. Kogarah’s medical precinct is attracting health-tech startups. Sutherland Shire Council has been actively promoting its digital business grants program.

There’s a pattern emerging across suburbs like Miranda, Caringbah, Mortdale, and Engadine — knowledge workers who moved to the area for lifestyle reasons during the pandemic are now looking for ways to work locally rather than return to the CBD full-time.

Whether Southern Foundry specifically succeeds will depend on execution, pricing discipline, and whether the community programming delivers genuine value rather than just nice vibes. But the underlying demand is real. Southern Sydney has the talent. It’s been waiting for the infrastructure to catch up.

The opening hours are Monday to Friday, 7am to 9pm, with weekend access for dedicated desk and suite members. More information is available at their front desk on Forest Road — they don’t appear to have a website up yet, which is a somewhat ironic oversight for a tech hub. Presumably that’s coming.