$150m sale looms for Leichhardt’s Norton Plaza

Changes are coming for Leichhardt’s largest shopping centre following its owners putting the property up for sale.

The 12,104sqm Norton Plaza Is being sold off by GPT Funds Management, with expectations that it could sell for around $150 million.

A successful sale at that price would see it smash its own record for the highest amount paid for a property in the suburb by nearly $40 million, according to CoreLogic.

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Located 6km from the Sydney CBD, Norton Plaza is a convenience, food based centre featuring a Coles supermarket, Harris Farm Markets and 50 retailers.

Norton Plaza has a strong performing Coles that is trading 36% above its benchmark.

Colliers International’s Lachlan MacGillivray and CBRE’s Nick Willis have been appointed to sell the property via an expressions of interest campaign.

Willis said it is rare to have a freehold shopping centre close to the CBD for sale.

“The sale of Norton Plaza will mark the second of its kind in over a decade,” he said.

Willis says given the scale and performance of the centre, there will be strong interest from a mixture of local and offshore investors.

Norton Plaza is famous for once being the crown jewel in Roy and Ron Medich’s property empire. They built the shopping centre in the late 1990s for $23 million, before selling it in 2007 for $112 million.

The entire Norton Plaza and Norton Central occupies 12,104sqm.

Following sale, Ron and Roy split their business interests and went their separate ways. Ron Medich was later convicted in April 2018 and is currently serving a 39-year imprisonment for ordering the 2009 contract murder of businessman Michael McGurk.

Norton Plaza is located in the middle of Norton St’s thriving retail precinct and receives more than 3.4 million visitors annually. It has 364 car park spaces and a fully leased net income of $8.701 million per annum.

Also part of the sale is the adjoining Norton Central, which has tenants including Westpac and Toni & Guy.

This article from the Inner West Courier originally appeared as “Leichhardt’s popular Norton Plaza shopping centre hits the market”.