First Marsden Park local centre opens anchored by Woolworths
Joint venture partners Newquest Property and Kaipara Property Group have fully leased their new Marsden Park local shopping centre Greenway Village in Sydney’s northwest in under four months ahead of its opening on Wednesday.
The 5500-square-metre Greenway Village, the first local shopping centre to open in the residential growth precinct of Marsden Park, has signed up a full-line 3400-square-metre Woolworths supermarket and BWS liquor store as well as 12 specialty retail shops and services. The centre, just off Richmond Road, also has 186 car parking spaces.
“We just ran a leasing campaign for the specialty shops and the response from the market was overwhelming,” Kaipara director David Hopper said.
“There is a strong appetite for retail leasing within the growing northwest.”
An artist’s impression of the new Marsden Park neighbourhood shopping centre that opens on Wednesday. Photo: Supplied
Sydney’s northwest has been the centre of strong residential development particularly with the $8 billion super-fast Sydney metro due in 2019. Marsden Park will benefit from this through its proximity to the new Cudgegong Road station, a short drive away.
Fifty kilometres west of the Sydney CBD, Marsden Park is in the North West Priority Growth Area and has undergone large land releases for housing.
Retailers and developers have cottoned on to the potential future growth of the suburb. IKEA and Costco have already stamped their presence in the area opening stores recently. The area is also home to the growing Sydney Business Park.
Mirvac has a 153-hectare rural site rezoned for residential development in Marsden Park, and Stockland has been selling turnkey homes from about $700,000 at their 178-hectare community Elara also in the same suburb.
“Wherever there’s growing communities and populations there’s opportunity for new shopping precincts,” Mr Hopper said.
“And because people want to shop and socialise close to home, the demand for mixed-use precincts is also growing.”
The developers obtained full leases and pre-commitments for Greenway Village before entering into a building contract. The weighted average lease expiry of the centre is 10 years, backed by the Woolworths lease, on a yield, based on cost of about 10 per cent, which exceeded Newquest and Kaipara’s expectations.
A Woolworths spokesman said the retailer was regularly looking for community supermarket opportunities and considered population growth as key to a new lease.
“These large retailers, all of them are smart businesses and they have better demographics analysis than most people have access to. They know where the growth places are in 20 to 25 years. Woolworths have been wanting to come to Marsden Park,” Rothelowman principal Ben Pomroy said.
Mr Pomroy, who is designing Marsden Park’s first multi-unit development, Australian Development Group’s 860-apartment project, said many developers have rushing to grab raw sites in the northwest.
“We have seen an uptick in raw site sales … this year people are looking to build houses and townhouses with a push towards affordability,” he said.
Aside from Stockland’s $700,000 townhouses, house prices in the area, while still affordable compared with Sydney’s median house price of $1.1 million, have climbed to about $800,000 to $900,000 for two-bedroom townhouses.
“The airport has changed a lot of people’s minds about the growth centres,” Mr Pomroy said.
Marsden Park is also close to the future Badgerys Creek airport, but the suburb, while a 10-minute drive to the future new metro station, still lacks a walkable train station. Its closest heavy rail station is Riverstone train station.
