Chadstone Shopping Centre in Malvern East, Victoria, Australia is one of the largest shopping malls in the southern hemisphere, with nearly four hundred stores. It is touted as "The Fashion Capital", as the majority of its vast number of stores are clothing or fashion related. It is owned by the Gandel Group .

History

Founded in 1960, Chadstone Shopping Centre was the first freestanding regional shopping centre in Melbourne. It remained Australia's largest shopping mall until November 2003, when Chadstone's biggest rival, the Knox City Shopping Centre , underwent large scale redevelopments to achieve a lettable area of 143,000m², breaking Chadstone's record of 126,980m² at the time.

However, Chadstone is currently (as of November 2004) undertaking a AUD$100 million upgrade of its own, with the Gandel Group planning to extend Chadstone's lettable area to 170,000 square metres, which will once again make Chadstone the largest shopping centre in Australia.

Commerce

Chadstone Shopping Centre has a total annual turnover of over AUD$800 million. It is surrounded by over 8,500 car parking spaces on three parking levels, and yet it is still notoriously difficult to park there. The current upgrade will increase the number of parking spaces even further.

The centre is known for its excellent award-winning architecture and prized sculpture collection, having undergone numerous renovations, extensions, and redecorations, particularly over the last decade.

It contains a diverse mix of major international brands and local stores. Major tenants include Myer, David Jones, Kmart, Target, Coles, BI-LO, Borders Books and Music, an AMF Bowling Center, Toys R Us, JB Hi-Fi , Pankcake Parlour , Reactor Café , Nandos, and a Hoyts Cinema Complex featuring 17 theatres (of which 7 are Cinemaxx with stadium seating, 5 include the higher-priced La Premiere seating, and 2 are Cinema Paris theatres screening art house and foreign films). The countless clothing stores within range from globally reknowned names like Armani and Ralph Lauren, right down to comparitively unheard of local labels like Saba.

External links

• Chadstone Shopping Centre official website
• November 2002 newspaper article on Chadstone vs. Knox City