I find it very difficult to find a destination spot for the younger people... If you go down the streets of Sydney, go down George Street and go down midtown, you have nowhere to go. There's no destination spot.”
So says managing director of Frasers Property Australia and self-confessed “city boy”, Stanley Quek. His remedy for the situation is Frasers Property's latest $2 billion development, Central Park. Currently a gaping cavity at the south-western edge of Sydney's CBD, the completed development is scheduled to open in 2013 and will incorporate 11 buildings for retail, residential and commercial use, along with a 6400sqm park.
“Our vision for Central Park is to create a sense of place, a destination for the entire city, where people can say, 'Let's meet at Central Park',” Quek says.
The “jewel” in the middle of the development is a six-level shopping centre, or what Frasers Property is terming a 'youth mall'.
“Something that appeals to the young, a thriving 18-hour mall, not something [that operates] from 7am or 8am to 6pm,” Quek says.
Heading up leasing for the shopping centre (which is simply called 'Central') is Colliers International's Hilton Hedley. Colliers offered the retail industry its first peek of the centre's layout and design in early March and Hedley is now taking expressions of interest from those keen to be a part of the development.
There a number of points of difference between Central's 'youth mall' and an average Australian shopping centre, Hedley says.
“Normally in a shopping centre you have precincts. So you might have your IT precinct and fashion precinct and your service precinct. This is going to be youth. That's our precinct. It's all jumbled up together.
“You might have a really funky hairdresser that's right next to G-Star that's next to the latest, greatest place to get your mobile phone accessory. It's not going to be traditional like a Westfield where you walk along, there's [fashion retailers] Country Road, there's Sussan, then you go to another level and there's your banks and pharmacy.”
Complementing the youth mall will be pockets of retail scattered around the Central Park site. The existing Kensington Lane, for example, is due to be transformed into what Frasers Property describes as a “people- centred laneway”, with hopes of emulating the inner-city vibe of suburbs like Darlinghurst and Newtown.
The reason Frasers Property is pursuing such a youth-obsessed centre is rooted in the demographics of the area. With institutions including the University of Technology, Sydney, Ultimo TAFE and the University of Notre Dame all within a kilometre of the Central Park development, figures released by property consultancy firm Urbis show the average age of those in Central's trade area is 33 years. Young couples and singles make up 54.9 per cent of the trade area population, double the Sydney average.
Area residents are known to spend 26 per cent more on cafes, restaurants and takeaway than your average Sydneysider while the typical per capita retail spend in 2010 is estimated to be $12,492.
With this in mind, Hedley is on the hunt for a particular breed of retailer.
“[A]nything cutting-edge fashion, anything cutting-edge IT,” he says. “Think of names like Apple, think of names like Sony, think of fashion brands like G-Star Raw, that sort of style. It's not going to be Sussan and Williams the Shoemen in this centre. We need to remember there's 105,000 students on our doorstep and it's really catering to that tech-savvy and fashion-conscious student. There are brands out of Tokyo that are yet to hit Australia who have expressed an interest in this.”
Hedley estimates there will be room for between 20 and 30 specialty retailers across Central's two retail-focused floors.
“We kind of have a format and a footprint to say 'there's this amount of shops and this is the area', but really they're just lines on a page. If General Pants for example come to us and say 'yes, we want that site there but it needs to be 300sqm', then we'd give them 300sqm.
“At the moment because it's coming out of the ground we're really open to what retailers want as opposed to us saying to them this is what you must have. It's a bit of an open canvas at the moment when it comes to how big people can go.”
Hedley is tight-lipped on leasing rates but can confirm leases will be of five years’ duration.
Quek, meanwhile, is ready to shoot down suggestions that Central may end up resembling other shopping centres close by including Mirvac Retail's Broadway and the six-month-old Westfield Sydney.
“We are probably now the largest mall operator in Singapore,” Quek says of Frasers Property. “If you go to Singapore, any mall with a point to it, that is our property, we manage it or we own it.
“We are trying to bring a destination mall from where we are in Asia, in Japan and Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, here.”
Central Park: The essentials
• Located in Sydney's Chippendale on the former Carlton United Breweries site.
• The entire Central Park development
will comprise 11 buildings including apartments, retail and commercial space.
• Central shopping centre will take up residence in the lower levels of residential tower One Central Park and will comprise 16,000sqm of shops, cafes and bars.
• The lower ground floor of Central will be anchored by a supermarket and fresh food. “We're talking the likes of an Asian grocer, Asian-inspired butcher and bakery, and convenience, so pharmacy, newsagent, bottle shop,” Hedley says.
• The ground and first floors will be cutting-edge fashion and technology. “Anything to do with the student lifestyle,” Hedley says. “There's 105,000 students literally on our doorstep that we want to bring in to spend their money, so anything to do with that demographic is who we're targeting for those two floors.”
• Level two will be a 'food empire' comprising 20-odd fast food kiosks of Asian-inspired cooking, predicted to trade until 2am. “Think lots of theatre, lots of woks, lots
of flames, lots of smoke, lots of nice Asian smells,” Hedley says.
• The third floor will be a more traditional table service restaurant offering. “A lot
of entertainment – we're talking karaoke, nice bars,” Hedley says.
• Levels four and five will be fitted with a health club including a 25-metre heated swimming pool and sauna, spa and sun deck.
• Colliers International is waiting until it
signs a major supermarket before signing specialty retailers for the centre. The supermarket announcement is expected mid-2011. “The whole centre's going to
be open in the first quarter of 2013 and really we've got until probably six months before that date to tie up [retail leases],” Hedley says.
The reason Frasers Property is pursuing such a youth-obsessed centre is rooted in the demographics of the area.Hilton Hedley.