Charter Hall offloads Rutherford to Canterbury Leagues venture
A special purpose vehicle associated with the famed Canterbury League Club has snapped up the Rutherford Mall on the NSW northern coast for around $49.8m.
A special purpose vehicle associated with the famed Canterbury League Club has snapped up the Rutherford Mall in NSW’s Hunter Valley for around $49.8m as the pokies powerhouse looks to diversify its holdings.
The vehicle, Rutherford Property Holdings, quietly bought the shopping centre from a Charter Hall-run fund, with the move in keeping with plans to build up a wider property portfolio. The shopping centre traded at a small premium to the Charter Hall fund’s December book value, with the neighbourhood sector seeing strong trading again as the assets have proved resilient in the face of the sluggish economy.
Canterbury League Club in the Sydney suburb of Belmore is one of the city’s largest clubs, and it includes pokies, restaurants, bars, function spaces, lounges and a 24-hour health club. Canterbury also operates two clubs nearby – The Lakemba Club and Moxon Sports Club – and has other commercial and residential property holdings.
The club has appointed a manager to the shopping centre, and it will be part of its passive property holding, with income to be well insulated from any potential changes to poker machine laws. Leagues clubs are key supporters of their associated NRL teams, and their contributions are critical to their mounting on and off field costs.
The Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs team are backed by the club, which gifted the NRL team a reported $5.7m in financial support last year.
The club’s existing property is reported to include just over $16m in investment property assets, with holdings in Lakemba, Belmore and Liverpool, where it has proposed a $500m mixed-use development.
JLL’s Sam Hatcher and David Mahood brokered the off-market deal but declined to comment, as did the parties.
The shopping centre is anchored by Woolworths and BWS, with more than 20 specialty stores, and is supported by housing in the surrounding areas as well as light industry, farming and manufacturing.
Proceeds from the sale of the 12,040sq m mall will be used to reduce debt within Charter Hall’s RP1 retail partnership, of which the listed Charter Hall Retail REIT has owned 50 per cent, since inception in 2011 alongside TelstraSuper.
“We continue to focus on curating the CQR convenience retail shopping centre portfolio towards a predominantly East coast metropolitan portfolio, with assets that dominate their trade catchment and deliver consistent above-average income growth,” Charter Hall Retail boss Ben Ellis said.
“This is now the fifth convenience retail shopping centre we’ve sold, bringing total divestments secured during fiscal 2024 to $350m at or above book values in aggregate, with most divestments located in regional locations in addition to Adelaide. The part recycling of these sale proceeds into core metropolitan assets such as Eastgate in Sydney extends our continuous portfolio curation strategy.”
