Chadstone, the nation's biggest shopping mall, records 5% retail sales growth
Australia’s biggest mall, Chadstone Shopping Centre, ranked as the top performing shopping centre in Australia in 2012 with 5% growth in sales, according the latest 'Big Gun' rankings compiled by Shopping Centre News.
Shopping Centre News defines a Big Guns centre as one with a gross lettable area of 45,000 square metres or more.
The 155,000-square-metre Chadstone mall (pictured below) in Malvern East, jointly owned by CFS Retail Property Trust and Gandel Group, generated moving annual turnover of $1.365 billion. The result was well ahead of the second best performing mall, the Westfield Bondi Junction, which recorded sales of $961 million – a decline of 1.2%.
In early 2013 updates, shopping centre landlords CFS Retail Property Trust, Westfield, AMP Capital Shopping Centres and Stockland all reported improved retail trade conditions with the ABS recording a 0.9% seasonally adjusted rise in retail sales over January to $21.6 billion.
“Despite what has been a challenging year, the underlying fundamentals remain mildly accommodative for retail expenditure,” said Michael Gorman, CFS Retail Property Trust fund manager.
Speciality sales lifted 4% across the CFS Retail Property Trust portfolio in January.
Gorman said Chadstone had benefited from "judicious remixing" of its retailing tenancy profile including opening a Zara store in August last year and "exiting some underperforming brands".
He told The Australian Financial Review the luxury precinct remained a strong performer, as did the Apple store.
Westfield occupied eight of the top 10 positions on the Shopping Centre News list with the performance of Westfield Sydney notable. The most recent addition to the Westfield group, the Sydney CBD mall generated $837 million in sales, growth of 11.3%.
Westfield Sydney also ranked first by speciality store sales generating $15,660 in turnover per square metre, growth of 3.4% ahead of Chadstone (up 8.6% to $14,333 square metres) and Westfield Chermside ($13,692 per square metre, no growth).
However, demonstrating what according to Shopping Centre News publisher Michael Lloyd was not the “greatest of years” for retail sale growth, annual turnover fell at Sydney eastern suburbs shopping mecca Westfield Bondi Junction and Westfield Chermside in Brisbane.
Top 10 malls by moving annual turnover
- Chadstone, Melbourne - $1,365.4 million (+5%)
- Westfield Bondi Junction, Sydney - $961 million (-1.2%)
- Westfield Chermside, Brisbane - $876 million (-1.6%)
- Westfield Doncaster, Melbourne - $840 million (+3.4%)
- Westfield Sydney - $837 million (+11.3%)
- Westfield Southland, Melbourne - $787 million (+ 1%)
- Westfield Marion, Adelaide - $783 million (+ 1.3%)
- Westfield Carindale, Brisbane - $762 million (0%)
- Robina Town Centre, Gold Coast - $748 million (+0.9%)
- Westfield Warringah Mall, NSW - $714 m (-0.2%)
Source: Shopping Centre News
Chadstone Mall is valued at $3.21 billion and returns a terminal yield of 5.5% according to CFS Retail Property Trust figures.
Around 20 milllion people shop at the mall every year.
The largest tenant in the mall is Myer which occupies 12% of the gross lettable area followed by David Jone with 9.9%, Hoyts cinemas with 5.1% and Target with 4.9%.
In addition there are over 500 speciality stores including internatinal retailers Zara and GAP.
Chadstone Mall dates back to the 1960s and is a super-regional shopping centre owned by Colonial First State Global Asset Management, with 50% owned by its listed property trust Colonial First State Retail Property Trust (CFS) since 1994.
In November last year Victorian planning minister Matthew Guy approved a $500 million expansion of Chadstone Mall.
The expansion plans include the building of twin 14-storey buildings comprising offices and a hotel at the southern end of the mall, two floors of international retailers, refurbishments of the cinemas and food precincts, and the addition of 1,400 new car-parking spaces.
The Shopping Centre News report found that around $40 billion was spent across 93 “big gun” malls over 2012 with 52 reporting an incerase in sales and 33 experienced a decrease in sales.
Overall 2012, retail spending across the 93 malls grew 1.7% over the year.
This was below national retail sales growth of 2.5% as recorded by the ABS.
Image courtesy of Flickr.