Broadway Shopping Centre

Overview

The original face of Australian retail, the once-glorious ‘Model and Moxham’ sister buildings on Broadway had fallen into dilapidation by the early 1990s.

Retailers had been gradually relocating to the busier CBD area and when Grace Bros finally closed their doors on Broadway, many assumed the now empty buildings, with their distinctive clock towers and globes (originally water-filled to drive the hydraulic lifts), would be lost to history. The renewal and reinvigoration just seemed far too expensive and complex, versus the rewards.

After several other developers had failed to make the sums add up, we secured the development rights in 1995. Working to Lang’s original vision for the site, we emptied the internal structures, leaving the regal facades intact. In one building we engineered 43,000sqm of retail space, over 125 specialty stores, a 500 seat food court and a 12 screen cinema complex.

With over 12 million visitors annually, it is now one of Australia’s highest footfall retail centres. But the smart part that made the numbers work for us was that in the second building we created Australia’s first ever off-campus university student residence, a 660 apartment Uni Lodge, which soon became a national trend.

The redevelopment has breathed new life into the surrounding area and been fully embraced by the community. Positively impacting the region, the reactivation of the shopping centre caused neighbouring property values to leap over 200 percent.