By Bonny Burrows
After much discussion and rumours, the future of the former Pakenham Masters site has been announced.
Home Consortium – which is redeveloping 61 former Masters’ centres around Australia – on 23 November announced the Pakenham site would re-open in December as an internal shopping mall with confirmed tenants Amart Furniture, The Good Guys, Supercheap Auto and Snooze.
The former hardware store site, situated within the Pakenham Lifestyle Centre, has remained dormant since its closure in December 2016, taking with it 110 local jobs.
Home Consortium finalised the almost $700 million purchase of the sites in August with the intent of converting the vacant sites as part of a national portfolio focussed around three retail categories – daily needs, leisure and lifestyle, and homeware and electrical.
It has announced at least 5000 jobs will be created across the 40 national Home Consortium centres, however it remains unclear how many jobs the Pakenham mall will create.
Local jobs advertisements are already up on the Amart and Supercheap Auto websites and Snooze is also looking for casual sales assistants at Pakenham and Fountain Gate.
No jobs are advertised online for the Good Guys Pakenham.
Home Consortium’s chairman David Di Pilla said the company planned to have eight centres, including Pakenham, open by Christmas, to take advantage of the holiday retail season.
Mr Di Pilla said the Home Consortium and its retailers were “delighted with the strong consumer response” to its already opened Rutherford NSW and South Morang, Victoria, stores.
“Our retailers across the eight centres that will be open before the end of the year are gearing up to offer grand opening specials and promotions as we head into the holiday season,” Mr Di Pilla said.
Despite speculation US-based retail giant Amazon was preparing for its launch in Dandenong South, Home Consortium wasn’t worried about possible overshadowing.
Mr Di Pilla said the company’s malls were a “different concept and in a different part of the market” to Amazon.
“We don’t have a lot of exposure to businesses that potentially will be impacted by Amazon,” he said.
The Good Guys was contacted for clarification on whether the Home Consortium announcement signalled a move from its current Station Street, Pakenham, site or whether two stores would operate within the town.
At time of publication, it was yet to comment.
