Westfield’s Frank Lowy: WTC has special meaning for us

Westfield chairman Frank Lowy is in no hurry to sell a stake in its $1.4 billion World Trade Centre mall.

Westfield WTC mall, which sits under the whalebone-like ‘Oculus’, will officially open next month

Westfield Corporation chairman Frank Lowy is in no hurry to sell a stake in its $1.4 billion World Trade Centre mall in New York, saying the group will first establish the project — which opens next month on the site of the September 11 2001 terrorist attack — as the world’s most productive shopping centre.

“I’m sure it will be the most productive shopping centre practically anywhere in the world (on a sales per square metre basis). We want to realise that before we think about partnering,” Mr Lowy told The Australian, saying it would also depend on Westfield’s requirement for capital.

“We want to first to establish what the shopping centre will really produce. We may or may not (sell an interest).”

Westfield’s World Trade Centre icon

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The group, which controls 34 international centres, is forging ahead with a $10.5bn development program with projects under way or planned in the US, Britain and Europe.

The international mall landlord expects the World Trade Centre retailing to generate up to $1bn in sales once all stages are open over the next few years.

“I would rather say that (income) retrospectively,” Mr Lowy said. He also confirmed his commitment to the Westfield chairmanship, saying: “I don’t have any voluntary plans for retirement.”

Mr Lowy will fly to New York for the WTC opening on August 16 — 15 years after the group first took control of the site only to see its destruction and the loss of a Westfield executive among the carnage of the September 11 attacks.

“Rather than a sense of relief, there is a sense of achievement,” Mr Lowy said of finishing the development that sits below architect Santiago Calatrava’s soaring glass Oculus which forms the roof of the mall. “We took possession, and of course two months later the disaster happened.

“This has special meaning because of the disaster and all the people and the organisations that were involved and their combined recourses.”

The complex development with 3.6 million square metres of office towers above, along with the WTC Memorial, involved a host of transport and local authorities. It benefited from its location at the junction of 13 subway trains, while being near ferries for Lower Manhattan, Mr Lowy said.

“(Some) 300,000 people a day are coming and going to their place of business, and there they find a shopping centre. That they are in a higher income bracket helps the shopping centre catering for them.”

The development faced some delays and a leaky roof, with the first stage to open next month and other stores to open later in the year. Local press reports this week said the centre’s income could be diminished with first stage retailers not paying full rents, but Westfield said “almost all retailers would be trading at August 16 including two H&M brands, COS and other stores”.

Issues around the opening of stores had no impact the group’s economic or investment return, the company said.

Mr Lowy said Westfield continued to look for sites for new projects around the world. It would choose only sites with the “biggest impact”, Mr Lowy said.

“There is nothing like the World Trade Centre site in New York. There are quite a number of good opportunities around the world,” he said.

“We are in America, the UK and we are building a big centre in Milan. This is not the end of our business. I think I could say this is the start of our business.”