Vicinity Centres kicks off $90m upgrade of Roselands Mall
Vicinity Centre's Roselands Shopping Centre in Sydney will a $90 million transformation. Photo: Supplied

Vicinity Centres kicks off $90m upgrade of Roselands Mall

Vicinity Centres has unveiled a $90 million upgrade of the Roselands Mall in Sydney’s south west, with a focus on dining and entertainment.

As co-owner, Vicinity will develop a new community-focused, culinary destination to update the mall that was opened in 1965 and was once described as the largest shopping centre in the southern hemisphere, even though it is quite small by today’s standards.

In March 2015, the centre was ear-marked for development that at one stage was going to involve a residential component, which is in keeping with other projects being undertaken by Vicinity to add value to malls to create town centres.

The trend of turning malls back into town centres with residential attached is gaining momentum. The idea is to make the malls service the surrounding community with not just the traditional apparel shops but to include offices, creches and bigger food courts and cinemas.

Vicinity executive general manager development Carolyn Viney said the vision is to create “The New Roselands” into a contemporary mall space flanked by leading food retail ”which will transform the existing dated centre into a culinary destination offering a convenient and authentic fresh food experience inspired by our local community”.

This is the first stage of development, with further stages scheduled for completion by 2023.

Ms Viney, who is overseeing a $1 billion program across the Vicinity portfolio, said the first stage of the redevelopment will be unveiled in mid-2019 and will see the centre’s lower ground fresh food marketplace increase by 2000 square metres and welcome 70 new retailers.

“The space will be redesigned to include five new specialty areas, including a Market Hall, Market Place, Atrium, Laneway and Pantry – each offering a diverse range of fresh produce to provide local shoppers and their families with the convenience and ease of more variety and choice,” Ms Viney said.

”Customers will now have the convenience of all three major supermarkets as Woolworths and ALDI will join the centre’s existing anchor tenants Coles, Target and Myer. The new fresh food marketplace will also include many of the centre’s long-standing local specialty fresh food retailers.”

Ms Viney said that the centres are increasingly becoming much more than just a retail experience – they have a critical role in enabling the desires people have to be with other people, to meet friends and to share experiences together.

Aside from the development program, Vicinity is undertaking a $1 billion asset sale process of non-core assets and has also created an unlisted fund with Keppel Capital which will be seeded by eight centres, also worth about $1 billion.

Post the sales, Vicinity will focus on its 50 key assets including Chadstone, Victoria and a major upgrade of the Chatswood Chase centres in Sydney’s north.

According to Morgan Stanley analysts, the benefits of the sales could see Vicinity’s remaining 50 assets have an average productivity of $11,000 per square metre a year.

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