Shopping Centre News: Beyond the backfill

Retail thrives on reinvention. 

The scale of repurposing happening across Australian shopping centres today is just the latest expression of something this sector has been doing for years. For QIC, it is not new territory. We have always thought about our centres as evolving environments to be continuously curated, rather than fixed footprints to be defended. Early consultation with futurists, urban strategists and consumer researchers identified the megatrends – from wellness and social consciousness to the experience economy and localisation – that have framed our active management decisions for more than a decade. What has changed over the journey is how deliberate, data-led and performance-focused our response has become.

There is no single template for repurposing retail space at QIC. We pursue it centre by centre, grounded in the specifics of each catchment, customer base and competitive position.

The starting principle is consistent. The mix has to genuinely serve the community, attract emerging brands and create meaningful distinction that cannot be replicated through scale alone.

Our close working relationships with retail partners are central to this. Ongoing conversations about how their formats are evolving, what their customers are telling them and where they see their physical networks heading, coupled with our own research and portfolio data, give us a fuller picture than either side could build independently. Our perspective also draws on global retail design trends and how they are reshaping customer expectations of shopping-centre environments. All of this informs how we approach repurposing from the earliest planning stages.

The experience trap

Space is no longer abundant. In a market without the large-scale developments of the past, every square metre we operate has to work harder than ever. Repurposing is not about freshening the offer; it is a productivity and performance decision with real commercial weight.

The industry has been challenged in recent years by the assumption that adding 'experience' automatically delivers results. It does not. Today's experience-led precincts have to play the role of anchor – defining the rhythm of the centre, driving frequency and turning visitation into spend. That is a far more demanding job than simply adding something novel.

The right anchors are rarely created in isolation. They are built through partnerships and deliberate curation, selecting an anchor retailer with genuine pull and then surrounding it with operators that amplify rather than distract. When it works, the precinct feels integral to the centre, not bolted on.

Every decision we make has to answer a simple question: does it shift customer behaviour at scale? If it does not lift visit frequency and spend in a meaningful way, it is not the right use of space, no matter how compelling a concept looks on paper.

Meaningful transformation does not always require large capital either. Some of our most effective interventions have come not from a big-ticket redevelopment, but from co-creation with retailers, with alignment, speed and a shared focus on performance across leasing, operations and marketing to support the commercial outcome. That is a different kind of discipline, and one we think the next phase of the industry will reward.

Floorspace in motion

The results of this long-term approach are now visible. Entertainment, experience and leisure, together with hospitality and dining, now occupy more than a quarter of floorspace across our larger centres – a footprint comparable to what department and discount department stores held in 2010 but contributing materially more to turnover.

Looking at the individual trajectories over the past 15 years, the shift is unmistakable. Entertainment, experience and leisure on its own has almost doubled in operating floorspace across the same period, with turnover keeping pace as it rose from 9 per cent to 23 per cent. Health and wellbeing has grown from 8 per cent to 11 per cent of floorspace but its turnover share has risen further, from 5 per cent to 12 per cent, indicating the category is over-indexing on productivity relative to its footprint.

That reallocation has come largely from department store space, which is a category that, even in 2010, generated a smaller share of turnover than the floorspace it occupied. Across this portfolio, traditional and discount department store pace has fallen from 31 per cent to 22 per cent over the past 15 years, with the pace of contraction accelerating since 2019 as more operators have rationalised their networks. The released area now accommodates experiential operators, premium precincts and non-retail uses. Socialising and entertainment venues have become genuine anchor formats, drawing visitation at scale.

Every centre has its own answer

The October 2025 launch of the Australian designer precinct at Canberra Centre addressed a gap in a catchment that was travelling interstate or online for premium brand experiences. Anchored by a Mecca flagship that is one of the largest in Australia – complete with skincare treatment rooms – and supported by the likes of Scanlan Theodore, Viktoria & Woods, July and an upsized Aesop, the precinct has strengthened the centre's leadership position in the ACT market.

Early trading is ahead of expectations, with notable growth in midweek afternoon trade and a spike in inbound enquiries from other premium brands.

The Mecca flagship is also a good example of what we call magnet partnerships. Mecca has set the benchmark for experiential beauty retail, with store environments and customer loyalty that demonstrate what is possible when execution and brand vision align. Every retailer we work with is a genuine partnership but some brands have the potential to drive network-scale impact, lifting frequency and cross-shopping when the right catchment fit, format and execution come together. For partners like these, we coordinate across leadership, leasing, operations and marketing to deliver exactly that.

Funlab is another example. After years working with us through Holey Moley and Strike Bowling across multiple centres, Canberra Centre was the operator’s first choice for bringing Hijinx Hotel to the ACT in 2024. The challenge-room entertainment concept, converted from a former Target box alongside a flagship Uniqlo and expanded Rebel Sport, demonstrates what continuous collaboration with the right operators can deliver. This trio combined now generates roughly three times the turnover of the previous mix from the same footprint.

Stacking the offer

Entertainment density is a deliberate part of the Castle Towers lineup. Last November, Funlab added a 2000sqm Archie Brothers arcade to join its refreshed mini-golf and existing bowling venues, reflecting the broader shift in how floorspace is being allocated in large centres. Ongoing investment in additional carpark capacity reflects our confidence that this mix is pulling meaningful incremental visitation.

A reconfiguration is underway at Castle Towers, where the former David Jones box is becoming a lifestyle precinct anchored by new-to-centre sportswear retailers such as JD Sports, Lululemon and LSKD, alongside expanding flagship formats for Nike and Universal Store. This configuration reflects a wider truth: athleisure and youth lifestyle are no longer adjuncts to women’s fashion, they are destination categories. Once fully open later this year, the precinct is expected to drive a meaningful commercial uplift, with adjacent storefronts benefiting from the additional foot traffic.

The same logic applies one tier up. Castle Towers’ new designer precinct clusters labels such as Aje, Oroton, R.M. Williams, Tommy Hilfiger and Polo Ralph Lauren into a curated browsing environment for style-led shoppers. Aje recorded one of the brand's strongest launches to date, and the precinct as a whole is performing comfortably ahead of forecasts.

Domino effect

At Watergardens, one repurposing decision opened the way for several more. When a Woolworths box became available in 2020, we reconfigured the space to bring in TK Maxx, a new-concept Rebel Sport store and a Cotton On Mega – three significant new tenancies that together lifted monthly sales from that footprint by about 34 per cent and productivity by 38 per cent. Rebel’s relocation then opened up the main lifestyle mall for remixing around a new-format Mecca at the end of 2024, which now ranks among the centre's strongest performers. Together, the two stages have given this part of the centre a different kind of gravity, attracting new customers and delivering performance for both the asset and our retail partners.

Anchor replacement is rarely a single decision. Done well, one intervention creates the conditions for the next.

Building strength

At Pacific Epping, the strategy called for adaptation and intensification rather than reconfiguration. Its Hunter & Gatherer precinct, unveiled at the end of 2024, is an example of adaptive reuse that preserved what was working while reimagining the customer experience, building commercial performance on top of community relevance.

The project retained the original roof structure while introducing expansive glazing to create a food precinct reminiscent of Melbourne's open-air markets. Around 20 specialty fresh-food merchants and a new-format Woolworths supermarket now sit at the heart of the precinct, representing the food cultures and traditions of the centre’s multicultural catchment.

Beyond retail itself

The broadest form of repurposing we have undertaken is at Eastland, where retail sits alongside a hotel, offices and civic uses on a fully integrated mixed-use site. In 2021, we converted 3500sqm of storage space into a Waterman coworking facility, with three direct links into the retail malls below, opening up new commercial logic for the surrounding retail and food offer by bringing in a captive weekday audience. Waterman member surveys show most users spend regularly in the centre, with lifestyle services – from hairdressers to telecoms retailers – seeing particular uplift from this segment.

What comes next

Strong, stable majors still provide the ballast our centres need. Around them, precincts anchored by mini-majors and experiential operators are doing increasingly heavy lifting. The discipline is to keep evolving the mix as customer expectations shift across categories.
 

For QIC, the productivity, commercial outcomes, community benefit and partner relationships built across 35 years of retail real estate experience - and intensified in recent years through performance-led repurposing - are what we take into the next phase.

Collaboration has moved from a transaction-driven moment to an ongoing operating model that delivers value for retail partners and our centres in equal measure. The opportunity ahead is to keep curating, adapting and intensifying the centres we operate, with the gains shared by everyone working alongside us.