The 7 year lease of my Westfield Knox shop ended in June last year. I had provided the landlord written notice back in late 2019 that we did not want a new lease as our retail focus had shifted to the high street, with terrific success.
They asked us to stay on for just over a year, and we agreed. The new terms we negotiated were excellent.
That lease extension is up at the end of this year. This coincides with the timing of works relating to the long-planned redevelopment of our end of the centre.
They offered an attractive new lease in a new location, which I declined. As I have written here previously, life on the high street is terrific.
Thursday, we started the process of selling down stock at the Westfield Knox store, so we can have an empty shell by Christmas.
We have enjoyed our time at Knox. It’s been a good centre to be part of. Today, however, our focus has shifted and is elsewhere. We are grateful to be leaving in a planned, structured way, and to have the next couple of months to say goodbye to long term customers.
Given that this was a newsXpress corporate store, I didn’t want or seek to sell the business as there is too much IP embedded in it.
Westfield Knox is an opportunity for a newsagent. The Nextra store that was at Knox closed years ago and transformed to a lottery kiosk. I know the landlord is keen to find a good newsagency operator to serve in the centre.
Hi Mark,
Interested to know why the landlord was so keen to retain you as a tenant, at a discounted rate, in your opinion.
Was it because they knew they were unlikely to fill your tenancy on a short term lease before planned re-development took place? Was the centre becoming less desirable as a destination for the public for whatever reason? I am unfamiliar with Knox so have no knowledge on the location.
No disrespect meant, hope this doesn’t come across that way, but anytime someone can negotiate a rent reduction with their landlord is a good thing, and the reasons for it could benefit a lot of tenants no matter their location.
Doug my understanding is that with the development they had a ton of moving parts so they wanted to keep current tenants in place as long as possible.
In terms of the offer for a new space post-redevelopment, I think it had to do with being a long tenant running a traffic generating business.
Shopping centres are made up of a lot of leech businesses that rely on the centre to attract shoppers. We actively promoted outside and drive destination shoppers.
While the offer to stay in the new development was excellent, it did not fit our medium term business plans.
The “Essentail Services” now renamed ‘critical Retail” tag for newsagents has acknowledged by Government Authorities for well over 3 decades. Acrually I beleive it goes back as far as the 1930’s however there is no written aknowledged proof of this.
It’s not new and no one body lobbied for its successful recognition.It was granted or used officially when newspapers had sfternoon editions and were the primmary source. Television news originally was supplied by the same owners of newsprint Murch Fairfax and Packer. Much has changed over the years however we have the title and the recognition of “Critical Retail” as it was deemed by Government that ‘Essential Services” were readily associated with Fire Departments, Hospitals, Police etc and Retail being a separate category newsagents were “transferred” to the “critical” meaning absolute essential retailers.