Developers call for consistency

Retail property owners and developers may be keen to build new shopping centres and expand existing assets amid Western Australia’s booming population and prosperity, but they face a number of planning challenges at a state and local level to achieve their goals.

There’s debate in the retailing industry as to whether the state government’s Network City planning strategy, introduced in 2005, is encouraging or hindering growth of shopping centres in the state. And some are questioning the interpretation of the term ‘bulky goods retail’ across various local governments.

The Network City approach, commonly referred to as a ‘centres policy’, seeks to ensure sustainable urban development by concentrating commercial and retail activities in, or adjacent to, designated urban centres that are closely aligned with public transport.

Major out-of-centre retail development, therefore, is restricted to reduce unnecessary car use and traffic congestion, and specific caps are placed on the floor space size of developments unless proponents can submit a strong economic case for their removal.

Perron Group general manager Ian Armstrong said the government’s unique approach to controlling the size of shopping centre developments in WA should be changed, and the size of centres determined by road capacity rather than where the centres fit within a prescribed hierarchy.

Perron Group owns several shopping centres in WA, including Belmont Forum, Mirrabooka Square and the expanding Cockburn Gateway.

“My view is that they remove them altogether,” Mr Armstrong told WA Business News.

“They don’t have them in other states and it’s hard to work out why they’re here…some centres probably have been held back in some areas.”

Mr Amstrong said developers had to go through a fairly rigorous process to develop shopping centres, and planning reform was definitely needed.

Shopping Centre Council of Australia executive director Milton Cockburn said he saw no major problems with the various planning schemes operating in WA, but revealed a government review was under way to examine the centres policy.

“I think it’s a sensible strategy because public infrastructure is scarce and you must make the best use of it by locating centres around public or private transport nodes,” he said.

“It’s important that transport is considered, but if the centre ticks all the boxes it makes no sense to restrain it. The only other city that had caps was Canberra, and they got rid of them years ago.”

Mr Cockburn said the size of Perth shopping centres, based on their gross lettable area, were very small by national standards and gave some indication as to how the policy had played out.

He said Perth’s largest shopping centre, the Centro Galleria in Morley, would rank 34 or 35 in Australia by size.

Keen to keep the status quo, ING Real Estate Development chief executive Greg Boyd said there should be guidelines determining the size of shopping centres in order to reduce traffic congestion and provide greater surety for shopping centre investors, among other advantages.

ING’s Lakeside Joondalup Shopping Centre is one of six strategic centres identified under the Network City strategy.

“It’s all about meeting market demand. You can still seek special permission to expand if you provide an economic impact study which proves your case…if you abolish these caps, all it will do is bring more cars into an area,” he said.

Mr Boyd suggested if the Whitford City Shopping Centre had been allowed to expand in the late 1990s beyond its current capacity of 63,000sq m, Joondalup would have probably been “leapfrogged” as a strategic centre in favour of Clarkson, and infrastructure may have been placed under more pressure.

At a local government level, the varying definitions of bulky goods retailing across jurisdictions is believed to be creating yet another level of red tape for developers and retailers alike.

A number of retailers, including national craft and homewares supplier Spotlight, have spoken out in recent months about the effect the inconsistencies were having on their businesses.

Spotlight CEO Stephen Carter told WA Business News last month that the varying definitions of bulky goods in local planning schemes across WA had been quite costly to comply with compared with other states and countries.

The retailer has been allowed to sell items such as glassware, china and greeting cards in some suburbs, and not in others.

Mr Cockburn said WA was not alone in dealing with the issue, and all states were struggling with the lack of a consistent definition.

He said the NSW government has recently introduced Local Environment Plans which contained zoning provisions that established permissible uses that were consistent across local government areas.

“Queensland and Victoria are about to standardise their policies too. Until you have that common definition, developers and retailers will continue to struggle,” Mr Cockburn said.