Westfield (well Scentre Group ) might be quitting New Zealand
The spectre of Westfield who own most of our shopping malls in Auckland and wider New Zealand quitting here has being floating around for a while now. Now according to the NZ Herald it seems this is about to become reality with Scentre Group about to divest all of its New Zealand owned malls such as Manukau, Albany, St Lukes and Albany.
From the NZ Herald:
New Zealand’s biggest and most valuable collection of shopping malls might be on the market with all nine malls controlled by a new owner.
Shane Solly, an Auckland-based director, portfolio manager and research analyst with institutional investor Harbour Asset Management in the ANZ Centre, said this morning Scentre Group — the A$17.3 billion shopping centre trust born out of the controversy of the Westfield restructure — might quit all its New Zealand shopping mall portfolio.
“There’s a lot of options being considered and this is just one of them,” he said of the business which controls nine malls here including Christchurch’s Riccarton and 277 in Newmarket.
Harbour owns shares in Scentre Group and Solly said while he did not know details, he considered a sale quite on the cards.
Australian AFR share market publication, Street Talk, also contained substantial details but said Scentre might only sell half its New Zealand malls.
That is just a week after Westfield and its former satellite trust, Westfield Retail Trust, won a hard-fought merger plan that provoked opposition from some its largest investors.
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You can read the full article here: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11286061
This is going to be interesting prospects for Auckland at least with the biggest mall owner in the country possibly to quit us entirely. The situation also presents Auckland with a unique urban development opportunity that we might not see again for a VERY long time.
Westfield’s malls are the centre points in four of our ten Metropolitan Centres (two deemed Super Metropolitan Centres in my submission to the Unitary Plan) with those Metropolitan Centres being:
- Manukau City Centre (proposed Super Metropolitan Centre in my submission)
- Albany (also a proposed Super Metropolitan Centre)
- Henderson
- Newmarket
Westfield are also have the St Lukes and Glenfield. Others own larger malls such as Botany Town Centre and Syliva Park.
Four of our Metropolitan Centres of which two could be Super Metropolitan Centre have Westfield Malls as centre points and Westfield is looking to quit.
So what does this present to Auckland and Auckland Council?
It means we have the opportunity to get these urban unfriendly, auto centric, social and community exclusive “facilities” and turn them into pro: people, community and non auto-centric places that blend in with the wider urban and social fabric. With Metropolitan Centres second tier (or third tier if the Super Metropolitan Centre concept is adopted into the Unitary Plan) behind the City Centre itself it means they are up for intensive development to support the wider sub regional (or regional in the cause of Manukau and later Albany) catchment, more so than the lower tier Town Centres.
Four Metropolitan Centres with Westfield Malls as their centre points. What could Council do?
Two options depending if we use the public works option or the public private partnership option as we are seeing in Downtown Auckland (see: A Story of Downtown Auckland [Updated]).
- If Council was to take a public works option then through Auckland Council Property Limited it would take a 51% stake in partnership with a private sector consortium of the four malls (rest go 100% to private sector buyers) (which takes 49%) and undertake urban renewal through its own methods (being the majority shareholder).
- The other option is await a private consortium to take a 100% in those four malls and Council immediately seek agreements that the new owner(s) via a Private Public Partnership (much like Precinct Properties and Council in regards to Downtown Auckland) will take renewal work on the malls so that they are more inclusive to their surrounding urban fabric than they are now.
Either way the opportunity could be before the City if and when Westfield decide to quit New Zealand.
The catch is do we have enough forward vision to grab this opportunity by the horns and run with it? Hmmm…
Talking Southern Auckland 