Petrol king buys Northland stake in $385m play
The GPT Wholesale Shopping Centre Fund is selling a 50 per cent stake in Northland Shopping Centre.
Rich Lister Nick Andrianakos has bought a 50 per cent stake in Melbourne’s sprawling Northland Shopping Centre from a fund managed by the GPT Group for $385m.
The move will see the tycoon, who made his fortune through the Milemaker chain of petrol stations that he sold to Caltex in 2016 while retaining the freeholds, join Vicinity Centres as co-owner of the landmark asset.
His company, the Andrianakos Property Group, confirmed it had purchased the 50 per cent stake from the GPT fund for $385m, with the listed Vicinity Centres to keep the management rights.
GPT’s flagship retail property fund put the half-stake in the Melbourne asset on the block last September, and the deal was handled by CBRE’s Simon Rooney and Colliers’ Lachlan MacGillivray.
The deal is further evidence of the big shift in the retail property market, as the GPT fund bought the stake in Northland for $496m in 2014 from the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. The complex also expanded its entertainment and leisure precinct in 2023.
The purchase is the fourth centre that Mr Andrianakos holds in joint ownership with Vicinity, adding to his co-ownerships of Colonnades in Adelaide, Broadmeadows Central in Melbourne, and, most recently, Elizabeth City Centre, also in SA.
Vicinity holds the management rights for all centres, including Northland.
Before forging into shopping centres in 2022, Mr Andrianakos made a run of office tower acquisitions, including 60 Flinders Street in Adelaide that was picked up for $101m, adding to 19 Lang Parade, which was bought for $85m n 2020 and 50 Flinders Steet that was bought for $175m in 2020.
The Andrianakos Property Group, under the guidance of chief executive Theo Andrianakos has had a productive three months having recently purchased a half stake in Elizabeth City Centre last November for $170m and now the Northland stake,
With the support of group COO Nicholas O’Brien, the deal was billed as strengthening the ongoing relationship between the two parties.
In 2023, the billionaire bought a half-stake in a Vicinity-run mall in Melbourne’s north for $134.5m and a year earlier he In 2022, Mr Andrianakos forked out about $138.2m to take a stake in Adelaide’s Colonnades centre, which is also co-owned by Vicinity.
GPT Wholesale Shopping Centre Fund fund manager David Sleet said the sale “continues the implementation of the fund’s strategy to recycle assets to enhance portfolio quality and composition, create liquidity and position the fund to continue to deliver consistent outperformance”.
Big malls are again being pursued by property investors, partly because they offer more certain returns than the still rocky office sector, and there is the potential to build apartments around them to address the housing crisis.
The GPT fund’s exit comes as it looks to remix and diversify its portfolio and focus on centres where it holds the management as it takes a more active approach under new chief executive Russell Proutt. Its flagship office fund has already sold off two office developments in Sydney to a private developer.
The two-level mall dominates its catchment. The 98,000sq m centre is anchored by Myer, Kmart, Target, Aldi, Coles, Woolworths and Hoyts Cinemas and more than 200 specialty stores. It also sports an outdoor entertainment and dining precinct.
The centre is expected to benefit from the growth of Melbourne’s northern suburbs. The property has significant development potential, with a masterplan for a 30-year staged development. The site could hold 2300 apartments and office towers in future.
It has the best-performing Myer store in Victoria and boasts a major tenant weighted average lease expiry of nearly 7.5 years by income.
