Mega suburb gets its own town centre
ARMSTRONG Creek Town Centre is open for business providing residents of the growth area access to essential services and speciality stores in their own suburb.
The first phase of the 15 stage development was opened by Wel. Co managing director and former AFL player Andrew Welsh on Wednesday.
Anchor tenant Coles said its new store had created 78 new jobs filled by Armstrong Creek locals. The supermarket forms part of the $1bn Armstrong Creek Town Centre development, creating a new shopping destination for Geelong and Surf Coast residents, complete with new town square and more than 400 car spaces.
The new supermarket features a market-style produce hall, an open bakery with freshly flipped flat bread, a gourmet deli with olive bar and expanded cheese selection, as well as Coles’s new readymade convenience foods, including more than 100 quickand-easy meals across Italian, Asian, Indian and Australian cuisines.
Mr Welsh said, while the COVID-19 pandemic had caused challenges, he was confident the centre would soon be fully tenanted.
“We have seven or eight stores (now) and two or three in a month that will be opening
– cafe, restaurants and other convenience-type shops,” Mr Welsh said.
He said some tenants had been unable to open their stores due to coronavirus pandemic restrictions.
“You want a centre from day one to be fully tenanted and activated for the community, but with COVID it just doesn’t allow for that,” Mr Welsh said. “More than half can’t operate or can operate at limited capacity, which is not commercially viable for them.
“I made a call six months ago to go ahead and I wanted to work with those tenants.”
Dan Murphy’s is expected to open at the centre in 2021.
The first stage of the town centre takes up 2ha and is predicted to expand to 40ha by 2035.
Stage one is expected to service 58,000 people as Armstrong Creek is predicted to grow to about 110,000 residents by 2036.
Mr Welsh said he was rapt by the centre’s opening day.
“We’ve been overwhelmed through our social media pages about the anticipation ... its extremely clear people really wanted something of quality and something of scale at Armstrong Creek,” he said.