Rare opportunity to acquire Adelaide’s only purpose-built outlet shopping centre

The highly successful Harbour Town Premium Outlets, Adelaide’s only purpose-built outlet shopping centre, is being offered for sale for the first time on behalf of Lewis Land Group.

CBRE’s Pacific Head of Retail Capital Markets Simon Rooney has been appointed to manage the sale of the highly regarded centre, one of Adelaide’s best performing retail assets.

The open-air centre occupies a significant 97,500sqm land holding, which is strategically located on the western boundary of Adelaide Airport.

“Harbour Town Adelaide is one of just 17 outlet centres across the country, with only 11 major, comparable transactions having occurred in the past decade,” Mr Rooney said.

“The sale provides an opportunity for investors to gain immediate scale in the highly sought after but rarely traded outlet shopping sub-sector, which benefits from greater trading resilience during downturns and continues to demonstrate outperformance given its discount-based offering.”

Developed by Lewis Land Group in 2004, the Adelaide centre is home to 118 outlet stores, including the largest Nike Unite and Tommy Hilfiger outlets in Australia.

Other retailers in the 28,544sqm centre include Polo Ralph Lauren, Coach and Calvin Klein.

In addition to its outstanding tenancy profile, the centre benefits from abundant, easily accessible parking for 1,480 vehicles and recently underwent a $12 million upgrade, which has enhanced its robust trading fundamentals.

“Harbour Town represents a rare opportunity to buy into a high-performing outlet retail centre with exciting future growth prospects,” Mr Rooney said.

“The attractive tenant profile is underpinned by strong trading specialty tenants, reporting outstanding specialty productivity of $10,014/sqm on highly sustainable rents, providing a platform for attractive rental growth”. 

“Outlet centres serve a much broader trade area than traditional retail centres and, in the case of Harbour Town Adelaide, the existing trade area population of 1.3 million residents as at June 2022, is forecast to grow by 1.1% per annum to reach 1.4 million residents by 2032. Over the same period, retail expenditure in the area is forecast to grow from $19.4 billion to $28.2 billion, representing annual growth of 3.8%.”

Mr Rooney also noted, “There continues to be considerable interest in Adelaide’s retail investment sector from both domestic and offshore investors, who have acquired circa $990 million of retail assets in recent years. This interest has been underpinned by Adelaide’s retail yield spread relative to Sydney and Melbourne and South Australia’s stamp duty exemption on commercial transactions.”