Well, one of the region’s busiest shopping centres has a new owner with a large property
fund manager, buying the Centennial Plaza in Cooma.
The precinct on Sharp Street, it’s home to 15 tenants, including a major supermarket,
banks, real estate agents and more.
Steven Goakes is managing director of the new owner, Natgen.
Steven, good morning.
Good morning, Eddie.
Nice to be with you.
What’s the motivation for you to invest in a town like Cooma?
Well, we look nationwide for towns like Cooma to invest in, basically, because we invest
in regional convenient shopping centres, which are supermarket-based.
That focus on regional gives us a strength in our market, because towns like Cooma are
actually very good places to invest because they have long-term prospects.
They’ve got history, and it’s just steady, nice places for us and our investors who
come from all across the country to invest.
We have similar investments in Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia, which
are the most regionally-based states as well.
In this challenging cost of living climate that the country has been facing in recent
months and years, how are those regional convenience shopping centres faring?
Well, there’s been, over the last decade or so, including through this time, a dichotomy
of how shoppers behave.
So there’s a lot more people shopping online, again, for looking for the bargain, chasing
the bargain.
And people are shopping more locally because they’ve realised that local costs are no more
than going to larger regional shopping centres.
And really, the major supermarkets, although they come in for a lot of flack about this,
have actually been pretty good about ensuring that their pricing is relatively consistent
over their networks.
Not totally consistent, but relatively so.
It’s interesting because you’ve got some retailers leaving regional areas, the clothing
chain Rockmans, for example.
Is it the supermarket in a shopping centre like this that really anchors the centre?
Yes, well, we don’t call them our anchor tenant for nothing.
That’s very true.
But one of our challenges and opportunities at Centennial Plaza in Cooma is to invigorate
the tenancy mix so that it’s a better experience for shoppers.
At the end of the day, what we’re looking for is more people to shop in the centre.
That’s good for our customers.
Our customers are the tenants.
They’re the people that pay our rent.
And if they can get more customers and we can assist them with that, that’s best for
everyone involved, including the shopper.
So when you say invigorate the tenancy mix, what might that look like?
What are the sorts of businesses you’d like to see in the plaza?
Well, the point about convenience, which is what we focus on, is ensuring that people
can get in, do as much as they can close by and get back out.
So the type of tenants we’d be looking for are those that people use very regularly.
That varies from place to place, but obviously groceries, people use banks, people use post
offices and those sort of services.
So the more of those that we can attract into one area we feel is best for the town to be
able to service everything in one location rather than taking more time and possibly
creating more traffic, etc., by going to various places.
It’s quarter past seven on ABC Southeast.
You’re hearing from Steven Goakes, the managing director of Natgen, which has just recently
purchased the Centennial Plaza in Cooma.
What’s the relationship like that you as owners have with the tenants in a centre like this?
How does that work?
In fact, we settle the purchase in a couple of months time, but we’ve been through a long
sort of due diligence period and getting to know the centre.
It takes time to establish relationships with tenants.
They tend to expect you to be like the previous owners, and I’m not sure what they’ve been
like in terms of relationships, but it takes fact finding, it takes a lot of listening,
it takes considering what we’re going to do together to promote the centre and what’s
important to them.
And typically those things are making sure that the parking works well and the pedestrian
access is good, obviously, allowing again people to get in and out as quickly as possible.
Lighting is another important issue.
Lighting goes to that general sort of feeling of safety and inclusion in the place you’re
in.
So, we go through those processes with tenants over time.
Many have different views on those sorts of things, so we take those into account and
come up with a decision on our strategy forwards, but that takes some months, as I say, to go
through that process.
Are there long-term investments when you invest in these regional shopping centres?
Does it mean you’re here for the long haul?
Yeah, well, our general term of our trusts for our investors is a five to six year term,
but that’s able to be increased if a centre is performing well and we’re doing our job
well.
So, we see ourselves as taking a long-term view.
If that ends in five or six years, so be it, but it’s a longer term view we take because
we want to make sure as well, of course, Eddie, that when we get to the end of that time,
we’ve got the best saleable asset in the best condition available for whoever the next owner
might be.
Steven, really interesting to get an insight from you this morning.
Thanks very much for your time.
Thanks.
Have a great day.
Thank you, Steven Goakes, the Managing Director of Natgen.
They’re a large property fund manager and they are purchasing the Centennial Plaza in Cooma
on Sharp Street where you’ve got the big supermarket and some 14 other tenants.
They’re a firm that invests in these regional convenience shopping centres.
He talked about the need to invigorate the tenants he mixed there at Cooma.
And you know, you think when you go to the shops, obviously the individual store is responsible
for everything you do when you’re in there doing your shopping, but when it comes to
that overall experience of where you park, what the lighting is like, how you’re getting
between the shops, it is that overarching owner that has a role to play.
Let’s get a local business perspective.
Lynette Armour is the President of the Cooma Chamber of Commerce.
Morning, Lynette.
Morning.
How does a big shopping centre like this sort of fit into the overall local business scene
in a town like Cooma?
It’s definitely one of the biggest, well, probably the only plaza that we actually have
in town.
So definitely plays a really big role in what we can offer to the locals.
So yeah, it’s really good.
What Steven Goakes was describing was, you know, they want to invigorate the tendency
mix there.
They want to look at if there’s things they can do to improve things like parking and
lighting.
Are there things that local business or that the local community might like to see different
in the area in the future?
No, I think it’s got really good parking down there.
So it does offer, especially the weather that we have out in this area, some under cover
parking, which is really good for not only the people that come to shop there, but also
other businesses that might need to park underneath during the day.
So that’s really helpful.
It does offer that, yeah, protection, which is really good.
They’ve had a few issues with the birds in the past.
So it’d be interesting to see what they can do to rectify that situation.
But yeah, no, it’s looking positive.
What would the businesses, the tenants be looking for from a new owner?
What might they hope to see from that kind of relationship?
I think the biggest thing is just that support and consistency.
The plaza has been sold numerous times over the last four years that I’ve been here in
town.
So I think that’ll just be really good that these guys are coming in with a five-year plan
and will just give that stability.
Are you seeing this sort of investment in the town?
I know one of the factors that the company mentioned was Snowy 2.0 and the impact that’s
having on the local economy.
Are you seeing a lot of investment in town?
I think it’s starting to build.
Definitely with Snowy Common Board, it’s been a really big help.
But yeah, no, it’s definitely starting to build.
You can see the momentum there.
Start of the year, you’ve got the push for more tourism in the Snowy Mountains all year
around, including in summer.
You’d also have businesses gearing up for the winter season.
How are things going at the start of 2025?
Yeah, I think there’s had a lot of traffic through town.
Let’s hope they’re staying and looking around and doing a bit of shopping.
But there’s definitely a lot of flow through of traffic at this time.
So a lot of people heading down the coast, a lot of people heading back up from the
coast.
So yeah, it’s definitely one of the busiest times on a busy snow season.
But we do have a lot of people that go down to Jimmy for the bikes as well.
So definitely a lot of traffic coming through town.
Is it a matter of trying to come up with new ways, encourage that traffic to stop and
buy lunch and spend a bit of time in town?
Yeah, definitely.
Even on the Chamber, we’re trying to do things that just, you know, makes Cooma look more
inviting to stop and stay.
So yeah, definitely that’s our big thing.
We really want people to say, hey, look what’s here.
Let’s stop, visit the local shops, spend a little bit of money and just see how beautiful
Cooma is.
Lynette, good to chat this morning.
Thanks very much.
Thank you.
Lynette Armour, the president of the Cooma Chamber of Commerce.