Westfield St Lukes

Westfield St Lukes

Looking from the southeast.
Location Morningside, New Zealand
Opening date 1971
Owner The Westfield Group
No. of stores and services 168 [1]
No. of anchor tenants 4
Website westfield.com/stlukes

Westfield St Lukes is one of the big three shopping centres in the western suburbs of Auckland, New Zealand, and is located on St Lukes Road. It receives about 6 million shopper visits annually.[2] With 43,000 m² gross floor area (2002 data),[3] it features a Farmers, K mart, Foodtown, a Village SKYCITY 8 screen cinema complex and approximately 125 shops (2004 data).[4] Its main competition is LynnMall in New Lynn and Westfield WestCity in Henderson.

The centre opened in 1971 and is one of the oldest in New Zealand. About 100,000 people visited it on opening day. At the time it was considered a fresh style of shopping, but since then the closed-in nature of the centre (with little in terms of outside features save signage and doors) has come to be considered somewhat bland and outmoded. Partly to change this, Westfield has invested around NZ$55 million in the early 2000s to extend and renovate the centre.[5]

In a 2008 rating of New Zealand shopping centres by a retail expert group, Westfield St Lukes received three and a half stars, just under the maximum maximum rating of four stars, based on the criteria of amount of shopping area, economic performance, amenity and appeal as well as future growth prospects.[6]

Expansion plans

In 2009, Westfield applied for a change to the District Plan which would allow the shopping centre to be extended to 92,500m2, with up to 77,500m2 of shops and cafes as well as 15,000m2 of office space and up to six stories of building – which would make the centre larger than any other shopping centre in New Zealand, including Sylvia Park. Westfield already own much of the properties in the north of the site, where it wants to expand, but some neighbours and groups have announced they will fight the mall expansion, primarily because of the extra traffic effects.[7]

References

  1. ^ Our stores (from the Westfield Group website. Accessed 2008-01-21.)
  2. ^ Gibson, Anne (19 May 2007). "Justin Lynch - Low-flying master of the mall game". The New Zealand Herald. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/shopping/news/article.cfm?c_id=318&objectid=10440567. Retrieved 3 December 2011. 
  3. ^ Councillors don't like "clutter" proposed for Westfield's Downtown & St Lukes sites - The Bob Dey Property Report, Tuesday 19 November 2002. Retrieved 2007-08-15.
  4. ^ St Luke's shopping mall, Auckland (from an image entry of the Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved 2007-08-15.)
  5. ^ Hewitson, Michele (20 December 2003). "Spend, spend, spend some time at the mall". The New Zealand Herald. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/michele-hewitson/news/article.cfm?a_id=29&objectid=3540400. Retrieved 3 December 2011. 
  6. ^ Gibson, Anne (2008-07-07). "How your shopping mall rates against the rest". The New Zealand Herald. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/3/story.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10520245&pnum=0. 
  7. ^ Gibson, Anne (2009-04-29). "Bigger St Lukes would be biggest of all". The New Zealand Herald. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/auckland-region/news/article.cfm?l_id=117&objectid=10569180. 

External links