Fremantle opposes Garden City plan
The City of Fremantle says a plan to double the size of Garden City Shopping Centre flouts the guidelines and will siphon more retail from the port city and undermine its efforts to establish a key economic centre.
The owner of Garden City Shopping Centre, AMP Capital Investors has lodged a draft structure plan with the City of Melville for the shopping centre to double in size from 60,000sqm to 120,000sqm in four years as part of an expansion of the Booragoon activity centre.
The plan aims to transform the shopping centre and its surrounding commercial area, from a retail-focused centre to a mixed-use centre where there would also be a big increase in employment and the number of homes.
Fremantle Mayor Brad Pettitt said the fallout would be a "sucking of retail out of Fremantle" to Garden City and a "hollowing out" of other nearby centres.
"A doubling in the size of the retail capacity of Garden City will only work if you have a very large population increase in the area, which doesn't seem likely, and the impact of that is you ultimately suck your retail pool from other existing areas," Mr Pettitt said.
"They are planning to double the retail in the short-term but the mixed-use doesn't kick in for a decade so it really is retail growth by stealth rather than orderly planning."
Fremantle has been earmarked to be developed as a strategic metropolitan centre and sits above Booragoon in the State Government's hierarchy of activity centres which are designed to align homes, employment and recreation facilities.
Mr Pettitt also said the proposed expansion did not match the aims of Directions 2031, the Government's long-term planning document which sets out where activity centres should be located and their mixed-use composition.
"We hope this expansion won't be supported, not just because it has the potential to undermine Fremantle and other economic centres but because it's clearly a grab for expanding the retail footprint.
"We need the WA planning commission and the State to come in and back up their own planning policies with good decisions that actually make sure that we can have an orderly approach to planning so that centres like Fremantle that are trying to do the right thing and plan for their rejuvenation aren't hampered by decisions that are not consistent with policy."
"What is being put forward in Garden City is not a mixed-use centre it's merely an expansion of the shopping centre."
An economic study commissioned by AMP Capital examined the impact of an expanded Garden City on 10 nearby shopping areas and concluded the trading impact would apply for a portion of the catchment shared between Booragoon and the other centres.
