Lewis Land developed Harbour Town Premium Outlets – Australia’s first and largest outlet shopping experience – opening it in 1999. Today, it maintains a 50/50 ownership with Vicinity Centres. It’s a centre poised for massive growth over the coming years. The collaborative ownership structure leverages the strengths of both organisations, with Lewis Land continuing to manage the centre, while Vicinity oversees the leasing.
In our business, that of shopping centres, it’s difficult to find ‘uniqueness’.
Of course, there are exceptions; Chadstone, for example, has the highest turnover (MAT) in Australia; a certain uniqueness there. But although we might find elements of difference, certain characteristics of a centre, even architectural innovations that distinguish it, the quality of ‘uniqueness’ is rare.
However, Harbour Town Premium Outlets Gold Coast is a unique centre!
Harbour Town Premium Outlets is unique because it doesn’t fall into any ‘single category’ centre.
It’s not a downtown, city centre, featuring only expensive labels and high-priced merchandise. It’s not a typical regional centre either, nor a convenience centre simply catering to the everyday needs of the trade area. And neither is it a large format retail or homemaker centre, or even an entertainment and leisure centre.
Although it’s billed as an ‘outlet centre’, that’s somewhat a historical classification. When it was originally developed in the late ’90s, it was the first outlet centre in Australia, so in those days, of course, it conformed to its retail classification because it was the only one. Over the years, other outlet centres emerged that confined themselves to discount shopping, so the term and classification became somewhat standard. Harbour Town Premium Outlets was different – it included a supermarket and a cinema, two medical centres together with a component of convenience retail. Over the years, the tenant mix continued to evolve further as the region evolved.
To chronicle that evolution, a picture is worth a thousand words! Look at Harbour Town’s location. It sits almost in the centre of the aerial map below. To the south are the Surfers Paradise towers in the distance, flanked by Broadbeach and Main Beach. Closer to the centre, almost due west, lie The Spit, Runaway Bay and The Broadwater. In the late ’90s, Harbour Town was somewhat isolated, distanced from the centre of the Gold Coast, sitting in a low-density region. That was more than a quarter of a century ago and, in that time, the Gold Coast has expanded exponentially. Today, Harbour Town sits in the midst of a high-density residential region that has no gaps or empty suburbs in the entire 15-minute drive to Surfers Paradise.
Had Harbour Town been developed in accordance with what we categorise today as an ‘outlet centre’, it’s highly likely that a brand new regional or perhaps a sub-regional would have emerged somewhere in the area. But Harbour Town was different; it had a supermarket, a cinema and some convenience retail and it had acres of spare land, more than enough to expand as much as it wanted to. Could it fulfil another role? Could it cater to an ever-expanding residential population? Could it fill the role of a regional or sub-regional? That’s exactly what it does, and that feature is a major component of its uniqueness. There are several others.
It’s an open-air centre, richly landscaped – exotic plantings and palm-lined malls, ‘green walls’ and water features abound – a definite ‘holiday’ atmosphere reflects its resort surrounds.
It’s relaxed, comfortable, leisure orientated, dotted with cafes and restaurant alfresco seating where locals and tourists blend. The layout is somewhat unique in as much as there is no obvious ‘major mall’, instead the centre offers a collection of flowing and merging precincts, each with its own landscaping features, architectural embellishments and, of course, distinctive retail offerings. It’s a centre in which you ‘wander through’, meander leisurely and enjoy; hustle and bustle belong elsewhere!
The retail offering is superb and classy. At Harbour Town, the presentation is immaculate. Here the ‘outlet stores’ present as anything but; individual fit outs are as good as in any city-centre shops. Polo Ralph Lauren, Coach, Camilla, Peter Alexander, Oroton and Michael Kors, sit in a precinct with interiors and merchandise presentation as good as in any of their ‘regular’ stores.
Meander further and you find yourself in another precinct featuring Hugo Boss, Armani and Max Mara and again, presentation and fit outs are anything but those seen in traditional outlet centres. At Harbour Town, shoppers move through a sophisticated, although leisure orientated centre, the only difference being the discounted prices!
And it’s far from just ‘luxury’, there are premium brands, like Nike, Kate Spade, Jurlique and further, the whole variety is included to house the likes of Tommy Hilfiger, Cotton On, Tarocash, Lorna Jane, Levi’s Australia and menswear specialist, Yd. Move to outdoor and sporting, and you’ll find Kathmandu, North Face, Reebok, New Balance, Adidas, ASICS; the list goes on and it’s hard to find an absentee – there’s even a JB Hi-Fi! And there’s a future plan to form an exclusive precinct of premium Australian designer brands, which will appeal to both local and international shoppers.
For tourists and visitors alike, Harbour Town is a ‘day-out’ trip. Free shuttle buses drop off their passengers from Surfers, Broadbeach and so on, at the Tourism Lounge, where multi-lingual receptionists greet them. Shopping, of course, is the main attraction but a $30 million upgrade to the centre in 2018 expanded the entertainment and dining precinct to feature some 33 food and beverage outlets. A major redevelopment in 2016 added an additional 25 retailers in the north-west mall, building on the successful launch of the centre’s luxury precinct in 2015.
And the future? It’s all about growth. This part of the Gold Coast is expanding as we write. Within minutes of Harbour Town there are literally dozens of medium rise apartments under construction.
In all, some 3,000 new homes will be developed in the next decade or so and all are within a short stroll or at most a short drive from the centre.
Yet that’s not the half of it. Harbour Town’s landholding, as we referred to earlier, is massive. The site area consists of some 23 hectares or roughly 56 acres.
The aerial map (featured above) shows two adjoining undeveloped sites identified as North Shore and South Shore. Planned developments by Lewis Land on these sites will see some 2,000 new residences housing about 6,000 people whom will be able to walk straight into the centre.
Yet as we all know, in our business it all comes down to performance, dollars taken and the success of the retailers. Harbour Town punches way above its weight. As examples, Peter Alexander, Calvin Klein, Boss and Lacoste, have their largest stores in Australia at Harbour Town and all perform impressively.
At 55,700m2, Harbour Town ranks as Number 82 on the Big Guns GLA table but in terms of MAT, approaching almost $600 million, it sits at Number 45. That alone doesn’t tell the full story; in terms of MAT/m2, often termed the ‘true’ performance benchmark, Harbour Town sits in the Top 5 centres in Australia with an MAT/m2 of a staggering $12,300!
So, on any measure, Harbour Town presents as a ‘unique centre’. Its draw as a tourist destination as well as a regional or sub-regional for its trade area, is unmatched in Australia.
Its Total Trade Area numbers some 1.1 million with an average household income of $93,735. One-third of those households represent families with children; the average age is 38. Add to that the tourist market, and we see a centre with more than 10 million shoppers a year. The Boxing Day Test Match at the MCG last year attracted some 87,000 fans; Harbour Town recorded 94,000 shoppers on the same day!
Harbour Town is a single level centre; all parking is ‘on-grade’; its landholding is massive and its geographical trade area is one of the fastest-growing in Australia. Put all of that together with the fact that its ownership structure comprises some of the most sophisticated shopping centre management, marketing and leasing expertise in the country and there’s only one direction in which this centre will meet its inspiring future.
This exclusive profile on Harbour Town Premium Outlets Gold Coast, is featured in the latest edition of SCN Magazine.
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