Coles opens $40m Showgrounds supermarket
State Melbourne member Bronwyn Pike on Saturday opened a $40 million shopping centre, developed by Coles on a former piece of Ascot Vale’s Royal Melbourne Showgrounds.
Showgrounds Village Shopping Centre, as it has been branded, includes a 3650 square metre supermarket tenancy, which the landlord claims uses approximately 15 per cent less energy and consumes a third less waste than the average store.
The complex is also designed with 28 speciality stores, 500 sqm of offices and a childcare centre built into the historic Woodfull Pavilion.
The showgrounds shrunk a third to 18 hectares as part of a $146m state government revamp announced in late 2004; about 4.5ha was sliced from each of the western and eastern boundary.
In May, former lord mayor Kevin Chamberlain suggested city planners should extend the train line that currently operates temporarily and ends at the showgrounds, to Maribyrnong where a master-planned community is earmarked longer term to replace a 128ha Department of Defence explosives factory site.
