By Bob Dey
Westfield - or St Lukes, the listed New Zealand shopping centre company which the Australian group controls - still has weeks to go before it can release concepts being drawn up for its new Newmarket regional shopping centre.
It has been regarded widely in the property industry for more
than three months as the buyer of the Mercury Energy site facing the foot of Remuera Rd and just off Broadway, but has been vying to buy more adjoining land.
The whole land deal will cost $50 million for ownership of some unspecified freehold property and a long-term lease on the Mercury property, which spans Nuffield St and runs most of the way to the Newmarket motorway viaduct, with its eastern border the railway corridor.
A resource consent application should be made to the Auckland City Council this year for a shopping centre which will be multi-level, but of so far unspecified size.
"We're not yet in a position to release details of what we're going to develop," St Lukes chief executive David Kennedy said yesterday.
"Westfield is still working through the concepts, which have to be presented to St Lukes.
"So size, shape and cost, the three things you'd really like to know, we haven't got."
Competitors in the shopping centre business have suggested a closed mall, which Westfield plans, could seriously damage the Newmarket retail district. But Westfield NZ director Grant Hirst said the proposed big centre, at least the size of the 33,000 sq m St Lukes centre in Auckland, would not be exclusive and would build on the existing infrastructure.
"All we're doing is plugging into what will continue to be a successful retail centre. We strongly believe it's better to do that than create greenfields sites."
Hirst says Westfield has built regional shopping centres in existing suburban retail precincts all over Australia.
"The prime example is Burswood in Sydney, where we recently demolished the regional shopping centre, the size of St Lukes, to rebuild it larger.
"When we knocked it down, all the street strip shopping collapsed because the shopping centre had disappeared."
He says the right thing for a new shopping centre to do is support the existing infrastructure.
It could take about two years to go through the planning processes, with the new centre in Newmarket built as soon as possible.
The Mercury premises, with a view down Newmarket gully to the Waitemata Harbour from the grand old Auckland Electric Power Board boardroom and chairman's office, were sold to Tramco in a secretive deal for about $25 million almost two years ago.
Mercury's successors, Vector for the electricity lines business and Might River for the retail distribution business, both plan to move out early next year. Vector has taken naming rights on the second of Symphony Group's new office buildings on Carlton Gore Rd, by the museum.
Tramco will retain the freehold on the site, with St Lukes taking out a long-term lease and buying some adjoining freehold land.
The Broadway sites are some of the most expensive retail land in New Zealand.
By Bob Dey
Westfield - or St Lukes, the listed New Zealand shopping centre company which the Australian group controls - still has weeks to go before it can release concepts being drawn up for its new Newmarket regional shopping centre.
It has been regarded widely in the property industry for more
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