WESTFIELD Knox has revealed its $450 million upgrade plans still haven’t been drawn up — and now it is asking shoppers for their ideas.
Centre manager Rachel Duggen said the upgrade plans were still in the “preliminary stages”, with designs still being drawn up, despite being given the green light by Knox Council about 18 months ago.
It comes less than two weeks after Westfield was given the green light by Manningham Council for a $500 million expansion of its Doncaster centre.
“We’re still working through what (the Wantirna South redevelopment) would look like, we don’t have any definite plans for that at this stage,” Ms Duggen said.
“We actually don’t have a project yet that we’re working towards as far as a date goes, we’re just very much in the preliminary stages of our planning.”
Ms Duggan said a “have your say” display outside Kmart was set up for customers to write what brands they wanted to see in the centre.
“There are hundreds of different panels ... it filled up within a couple of days,” she said. People were now going through ticking ideas they agreed with.
Lush, Mecca Cosmetica and Apple Store were the most popular suggestions, along with Big W, Woolworths, David Jones and Aldi.
Ms Duggen said the feedback would be used to help management make product and brand decisions “right now as well as in the redevelopment”.
“We asked for it so we’ll definitely be using it to make decisions with regards to future tenancy agreements,” she said.
“For us, it has also reinforced some of the major brands we were already working towards for our redevelopment.”
But Ms Duggen said plans were “changing all the time” and could not give details about how many new shops the upgraded centre would have or what they would be.
“We’ll be able to announce (retailers) when there’s actually deals done but we’re not negotiating at this stage,” Ms Duggen said.
She said there were no plans “at this stage” to introduce paid parking at the shopping centre.
