Shopping Centre

The weekly ritual of shopping for family essentials might be all it takes to persuade a cashed-up investor to swoop on a sprawling retail package now up for grabs in Melbourne’s east. 

Major landlords including the owner of the local Westfield empire, Scentre, as well as Vicinity Centres, GPT and Stockland could be exposed as David Jones looks to shrink its store network in Australia.

Shopping centres are anything but dead if a $250 million purchase “Mean Machine” swimmer Mark Stockwell has just completed in the Queensland city of Noosa is anything to go by.

Stockland will push ahead with plans to overhaul Sydney’s landmark Piccadilly Centre after taking full control of the near $700 million complex and selling off a stake in a nearby $680 million tower.

The under-pressure shopping centre market is about to receive its biggest test in years, with AMP’s funds arm exploring a sale of the $1.2 billion Garden City Shopping Centre south of Perth.

Woolworths has sold a suburban Perth shopping centre for $27.3million, but in a lucrative win for the new owners the supermarket giant could stay on as a tenant for another 60 years.

Shopping centre landlords are again turning to the residential market to bolster returns from their projects with several major companies planning apartment towers above or around their developments.

Chinese-backed private group Chaolong Developments is looking to expand its Melbourne property empire with the acquisition of the Century City Walk Shopping Centre and the adjoining 200-room Novotel Melbourne Glen Waverley hotel for more than $145 million.

New sole owners of the Waurn Ponds Shopping Centre have flagged future development to capture business from the expanding Armstrong Creek Growth Area.