Plans Revealed for $80m Retail Strip on ‘Eyesore’ WA Site

Plans for an $80-million neighbourhood shopping centre at Stirling, 10km north of the Perth CBD, have been placed on exhibition. 

Commercial property development company Windsor Knight has filed plans to the City of Stirling for assessment by the Metro Inner-North Development Assessment Panel (DAP).

It wants to build a 6383sq m neighbourhood centre, dubbed Woodlands North, with 11 tenancies. 

There would be parking for 174 vehicles and 1040sq m of landscaping on the site, described as an “eyesore” that has remained undeveloped for 25 years, according to planning documents.

The shopping centre would provide a “neighbourhood level of service for the surrounding locality” rather than the broader metropolitan area.

▲ Rendering of the Stirling project designed by Place Fabric architects.

The site is close to “excellent” public transport, which the developer said had been the catalyst for “ongoing redevelopment, diversification and densification of the immediate locality”.

It is 250m from Westfield Innaloo, on the opposite side of Scarborough Beach Road, which the developer said was considered “hostile” to small retail tenancies due to high volumes of traffic. 

The proposal said the single-storey neighbourhood centre, on a site across several addresses between 270 and 278 Ewan Street and 367 Scarborough Beach Road, would change that. 

It would have a mix of retail, speciality, health and restaurant tenancies, as well as a central public laneway, which would connect Ewan Street with the Stirling city centre. 

The majority of tenancies would be less than 1000sq m, however, the anchor tenancy will exceed 3800 square metres.

▲ The north and south buildings would sit on either side of a public laneway.

Scarborough Beach Road has been highlighted as a growth centre particularly for health and wellness, while suburban retail strips in Perth are on the rise, reporting the lowest vacancy rates since 2018.

The Stirling project has been in the works for several years—a pre-lodgement meeting was held in 2021, when the development included a residential component of 122 homes.

The local planning framework stipulates a residential element for the wider site. 

But while many developers on the east coast have been adding residential to commercial projects, Windsor Knight decided to remove the residential element and is asking for a deviation from the requirement. 

Windsor Knight’s application said that the residential-focused DA was “ultimately withdrawn due to the infeasibility of the residential component”, but that the commercial element remained feasible. 

The shopping centre project has an estimated build cost of $80 million.