Brookfield is selling a 50 per cent stake of its Sydney CBD shopping centre, World Square.
JLL has been appointed to market the sale of the centre, which is anchored by a Coles supermarket and boasts six mini-major tenancies, 97 specialty tenancies including kiosks, providing a total GLA of 17,359sqm. It also has car parking for 522 spaces.
World Square expands an entire city block, bounded by George, Pitt, Liverpool and Goulburn Streets, and is located in close proximity to Darling Harbour and Chinatown.
“World Square offers investors an extremely rare opportunity to secure a strategic core retail foothold, in one of the most densely populated and growing precincts not only in the Sydney CBD, but across the country,” Simon Rooney, JLL’s head of retail investments – Australasia, said.
“A surge in apartment developments in the Sydney CBD has and will continue to directly benefit World Square over the next two to three years, as many of these projects complete construction, permanently expanding the resident population of the immediate local area,” Rooney said.
“This asset will appeal to a wide range of domestic and offshore buyers and institutional and ultra-high net worth private investors, due to its prime location and strong trading performance, as well as significant potential to add major international brands to the centre over time.
“There has and continues to be a very limited number of major CBD retail assets of significant scale in Australia,and this limited stock is very rarely traded. There have been just four straight retail transactions above $150 million across all CBD markets since 2007 and just one in the Sydney CBD – being Harbourside Shopping Centre in November 2013 for $252 million.
“Given the shortage of core CBD opportunities historically, World Square will be competitively pursued and it will be a real test for core retail pricing,” Rooney said.
World Square is being offered for sale via an International Expressions of Interest (EOI) campaign, closing on Thursday, November 12, 2015.
