Westfield Helensvale

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Helensvale Town Centre sign

Opened in Helensvale on the 13th of October 2005, Westfield Helensvale also referred to as Helensvale Town Centre, is the newest Westfield Shopping Centre.

It is the first Westfield for the Gold Coast and includes Coles, Kmart, ALDI, Target and Woolworths as majors as well as a food court with McDonald's, KFC and Subway. It also provides optimum access to Helensvale Station.

There was quite a battle to get planning approval for this centre. It was suggested that the Helensvale location was too close to existing centres at Southport and Runaway Bay and a better town planning outcome would be for a new shopping centre in the Coomera Town Centre (about 5km down the M1 Motorway). There are less residents at Coomera at the moment so a new shopping centre there would likely take longer to reach good income figures for the shop. The Westfield Helensvale site will undermine the viabiltiy of a true regional shopping centre at Coomera - and so the pattern of too many shopping centres for the Gold Coast continues (in some people's opinion too many anyway). Part of the outcome of this debate was that part of the Westfeild centre looks like an outdoor shopping street connecting the train station through to the older Helensvale shops nearby. The idea of this is that people shopping within Westfield are not just stuck inside the building - but encouraged to flow along the outdoor streets into the adjoining neighbourhoods. Westfeild shopping centres often seem like isolated islands where shoppers are stuck inside and are not encouraged to engage with the surronding neighbourhood.