[PRO] Westfield Marion

[JamesXander]

Ok, its becoming a fashion store. Ever after? Somethign along those lines. A womens fashion store. I reckon this is a real stuff up by Marion. They now have no shops that will be open past 5pm. Sanity now Dymocks have closed. It could potentially impact on Event Cinemas as well. A real shame.

[monotonehell]

Ok, its becoming a fashion store. Ever after? Somethign along those lines. A womens fashion store. I reckon this is a real stuff up by Marion. They now have no shops that will be open past 5pm. Sanity now Dymocks have closed. It could potentially impact on Event Cinemas as well. A real shame.

That's because the shops never made enough money to be bothered with the extended hours. As it is in most places. The cinema will do just as well (or badly) as it's always done without the shops open.

[JamesXander]

Actually what happened with Sanity is they could not keep up with the rising rent because they were situated in probably the primest spot in the whole centre. And there is only a limited amount of shops that can stay open past 5 (those near the cinema and dining area). Dymocks did make money, alot of money during nights actually. It was just run by a clown, and hence is closed (much the the anger of the Dymocks company...because it was a franchise they couldnt stop it from closing).


I cant see it having a positive impact, so therefore I would conclude having sanity and dymocks closed will be a negative for the centre?

[Ben]

Myer Marion is about to recieve an upgrade for Myer's "Project Batman". This will be the first South Australian store to recieve the facelift as part of this project and will commence in the next 2 months. I'm unsure about how significant of an upgrade it will be but as the store has not received a renovation in over 20 years it is more than welcome.

[pushbutton]

Well it certainly needs it. Every time I go there I am amazed that Myer management has allowed it to remain in the state it is in for so long. The worst thing of all is the pink vinyl flooring on level one! Even Target has much nicer flooring than that these days!

I will wait with interest to see what they do.

Hopefully it won't be anything like one of their disasterous late 1990s / early 2000s "renovations" where they just ripped the store to pieces and moved everything around, and then roughly patched up the holes with various multi-coloured bits of leftover carpet! (I was working for Myer at that time and it was VERY embarrassing!)

To be fair though most of Myers recently opened and recently refurbished stores do look great, so hopefully it will be a proper refurbishment to that standard.

[Omicron]

Myer Marion have literally thrown their stock and a few cheap fittings through the front door and stuck pricetags on wherever it all happened to land.

[pushbutton]

I just googled "myer project batman" and it would appear that it will only be a very minor superficial upgrade to their visual merchandising, rather than anything like a full refurb at this stage unfortunately.

I guess any more substantial refurb probably is more likely to happen around the same time as the Westfield development, whenever that may be.

[Ben]

According to the Westfield Financial report released on the ASX last month it mentions Marion is in "Pre Development Phase", with about 8 other centres in Aus but no other SA centres. I would take this as a good sign and would expect to here more later this year.

[steveadl]

Ben, hopefully it will happen soon - but don't hold your breath. Marion's been listed in Westfield reports in 'Pre-Development' stage for a couple years now.

[pushbutton]

Ben, hopefully it will happen soon - but don't hold your breath. Marion's been listed in Westfield reports in 'Pre-Development' stage for a couple years now.

I've heard from a Westfield source that West Lakes is supposed to start in late 2010. That's the latest estimate as of quite recently. I can't see Mairon starting before that.

[Ben]

Ben, hopefully it will happen soon - but don't hold your breath. Marion's been listed in Westfield reports in 'Pre-Development' stage for a couple years now.

I've heard from a Westfield source that West Lakes is supposed to start in late 2010. That's the latest estimate as of quite recently. I can't see Mairon starting before that.

West lakes was not even on the Financial projection document mentioned above released in February as earmarked for development in the next 3 financial years...

[AtD]

Devil's advocate for a moment: Westfield have the typical mind-fuck corporate structure with subsidiaries, partnerships, joint ventures, trusts, holding companies and so on, with relationships with every other investment bank and their dog. Just because it wasn't mentioned in a specific ASX release (release for which company? There's a few), doesn't mean it won't happen.

[pushbutton]

I do know for a fact (from senior Westfield managers) that all 3 Westfield centres in SA are earmarked for development, and in fact all 3 have detailed development plans waiting to happen, and even tenants waiting to fill at least some of the proposed stores.

It's just a combination of the usual time-wasting garbage that always goes on before any major project can start, combined with the after-effects of the global economic crises of the last couple of years, which caused Westfield to put all unstarted developments on hold.

Presumably once things do finally start to happen, it won't be at all 3 SA Westfields at the same time. I doubt they would want that. Therefore whichever centre or centres are not lucky enough to start development first will likely have to wait another couple of years until the first one(s) have been completed. On the positive side this means we should see ongoing development of Westfield centres continuously for up to 6 years once they start, which will make for interesting times.

[steveadl]

Yes, but that's just Westfield's modus operandi. Pretty much every centre they own worldwide will have development plans made for them (possibly with the exception of centres that have just had an expansion), they get a better ROI from developing existing centres than they do on new acquisitions in many cases. It's just a matter of when they finally pull the trigger and start each project that is in question, and once the general public become aware of it as Westfield releases details, those are the projects that will be given the green light sooner. Could be next month, could be 5yrs away, but I guarantee you Marion, West Lakes and TTP all have development plans set to go for their next stage, and probably another set for the next stage after those ones are completed.

[fabricator]

Westfield's basic operation is to upgrade/expand shopping centres to draw shoppers in, They don't wait until things look daggy and start falling apart before they refurbish.