Wentworthville Mall: Dunmore St redevelopment on public exhibition
As the last businesses at a western Sydney mall shut, plans to resurrect the deserted shopping centre with a $212 million project featuring 500 apartments have been lodged but some veteran retailers doubt the suburb will ever bounce back.
Parramatta
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Plans for a $212 million redevelopment of Wentworthville Mall, with 500 apartments over 21 storeys, have been displayed for public feedback but long-time traders who saw the shopping centre die a long and painful death are sceptical it can bounce back into a thriving hub.
Poly NSW has lodged a development application for the site at 42-44 Dunmore St and 13 Pritchard St East to replace the ailing mall at Wentworthville and provide a “vibrant mixed-use neighbourhood’’ to link the station with the shops surrounding a public plaza.
The application says the proposed plaza will be “creative, fun, lively and relaxed” while being “safe, friendly and comfortable’’.
It will include a supermarket, four blocks with 523 flats, a four-deck basement carpark and a two-storey podium comprising a ground-floor supermarket and shops as well as public domain.
The “landmark” plans will feature a leafy link connecting Pritchard St to Dunmore St on to the train station and is expected to revive Wentworthville, where 1800 extra homes are planned in a plan to dramatically change the skyline of the once small but bustling village-style shopping centre.
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At Wenty Mall, business has declined rapidly since the IGA supermarket shut in 2017 and, without an anchor tenant, small businesses soon collapsed.
COVID-19 forced Millers women’s fashion to close in March and the longstanding Donna’s Flower Shop closed in June after 27 years of trading.
On Friday, Wentworthville’s Denture Services was the last business to leave the mall.
Dental technician Andrew Burg has been scathing of the plans to add extra units to the “glut of units’’ already in Wentworthville and says the redevelopment will turn it into a Third World shopping centre with no infrastructure such as parks.
“Wentworthville is stuffed,’’ he said.
“We’ve been here for over 40 years and seen it as a vibrant little village, busy, people smiling, people happy. Now every patient walks past and says ‘isn’t this terrible?
“Every building here is about four-five storeys high and they’re going to put 21 storeys — it’s going to look hideous.’’
Mr Burg has doubts the shopping centre can attract a major supermarket.
“There’s no way you’re going to get a shopping centre with a major drawcard like a Woolworths or Coles because the population here don’t shop there,’’ he said.
“Unless you can get a big drawcard like a Franklins or IGA, little shops aren’t going to survive.’’
Mr Lynch, who recently relocated Donna’s Flower Shop to Penrith, doubts the shopping centre can resurrect itself.
“It was definitely mismanaged from the word go. There was no business consultation. They’re going to struggle to get people back in the centre.’’
He also doubts a supermarket could be the anchor tenant given the Woolworths and Aldi nearby on the Great Western Highway and Coles at Westmead, and another planned for the Bonds site at Pendle Hill.
“The rents are going to be so high,’’ he said.
“You’re talking Westfield-style rents.’’
But Cumberland Mayor Steve Christou is confident a supermarket will open in the suburb.
“I’m very proud of the proposed revitalisation of Wentworthville,’’ he said.
“The realities are, for a couple of decades Wentworthville’s been severely neglected which is why we’ve had this mall that’s become a ghost town.
“We’re seriously making an effort to turn Wentworthville into a suburb we can be proud of.’’
Cumberland councillor Michael Zaiter echoed traders’ concerns of drawing a major supermarket but said once it opened “hopefully other businesses will thrive’’.
After a long planning process of nine years, he said he hoped the development application would start to turn around Wentworthville.
“I would hope that, should the DA go through and start getting the development in place along with the new commercial precinct, it would encourage other developers to start lodging their DAs; it needs to liven up the area.’’
● View the plans and send feedback to council@cumberland.nsw.gov.au before September 16.
