Atterbury’s big Western Cape development at Richmond Park, undertaken with co-owners Old Mutual and the Richmond Park community, is expanding at a rapid rate. The construction of the new retail centre, Richmond Corner, is next on the agenda, and tenant interest is extremely high. We hear the good news from leasing manager Stewart Steyn…

In terms of the overall planning of Richmond Park, when is the retail element scheduled to open?
The planned opening date is 26 March 2020. Everything is on track at this stage. We have commenced with earthworks to enable the main contractor to commence with construction towards the end of this month.

How did you determine the projected opening date, considering that demand for a shopping centre would only peak once the Park is fully developed and populated?
There were a number of considerations. At Atterbury, we always ensure guaranteed viability and as you correctly observe, for a retail centre to be viable it needs a sufficiently large market to sustain it. We, therefore, decided that the commercial side of the development had to be quite far advanced and we allowed for some growth in the area before embarking on the retail element. Secondly, the right tenant mix is essential for any retail development and optimising that takes careful planning. The third reason is that we also had to do a lot of infrastructure development in and around the Park, which was prioritised.

Where is the centre situated in the Park, and what makes the placement optimal?
Richmond Corner is located on the very busy corner of Plattekloof Road and Tyger Valley Road; this is an excellent locality for this type of development – visibility and location are prime just off the busy N7.

Who is the wider community that the centre is expected to service?
Because of the location and excellent visibility of the centre, the target market will be both the residents staying in the immediate area, businesses in the area, as well as people on the way home from the N7 going to Plattekloof and surrounding suburbs.

What can you tell us about the tenant mix in Richmond Corner, and how many leases have been signed? How many individual shops will there be?
The centre is already about 95% let. Richmond Corner will be anchored by PicknPay Supermarket, Clicks and Woolworths Food. The rest of the centre will comprise of two drive-through restaurants, a branch of a well-known coffee shop, takeaway food shops and conveniently oriented line shops. It will feature 20 shops in total of which only three line shops are still vacant. At this point we are looking for a strong, well-known optometrist and a hairdresser to complement the tenant mix that we have secured.

What community involvement, if any, has there been in the development of the retail concept? What sort of community feedback have you had so far?
Other than the anchor tenants, we deliberately sourced the strongest, best-known local tenants, which most of the line shops are. We are very excited and proud of the tenants that we have signed up, and we are very grateful for their support. Richmond Corner will unquestionably be a valuable addition to the bigger Richmond Commercial Park, serving the community as a whole.