Billionaire Spends $450m at St Ives to Launch Retail Play

Iris Capital is making its first major foray into the retail sector, spending $450 million to buy a centre and 12 adjoining properties in Sydney’s Upper North Shore.

The developer, led by billionaire Sam Arnaout, struck the deal for St Ives Shopping Village in one of the largest super neighbourhood shopping centre sales on record. 

The centre has consistently outperformed industry benchmarks to rank first in performance in Shopping Centre News’ annual ranking of Mini Gun Shopping Centres for 20 consecutive years.

EK Nominees bought the property in 1986 and progressively purchased the adjoining properties along Mona Vale Road and Denley Lane, which are a mix of retailers, restaurants and services. The Katz-family-owned asset was listed in mid-2022.

St Ives Shopping Village has a moving annual turnover of $264 million across the 17,475sq m triple-supermarket-anchored retail asset.

Arnaout said they had long had plans to buy the property, turn it into a mixed-use project and use it as the foundation of their new retail management platform. 

“St Ives Shopping Village has long been identified by Iris Capital as the perfect entry point into the major Australian retail ownership landscape,” chief executive Arnaout said.

“St Ives Shopping Village is well positioned to benefit from significant tailwinds benefitting the retail sector, specifically the undersupply of retail floorspace in the catchment, combined with critically needed future residential supply.”

▲ Inside St Ives Shopping Village in Sydney’s Upper North Shore.

Colliers Asia-Pacific retail capital markets managing director Lachlan MacGillivray secured the transaction on behalf of EK Nominees.

“The sale of St Ives Shopping Village further reinforces strong market demand for irreplaceable retail assets,” MacGillivray said. 

“This sale takes year-to-date retail transactions [nationally] to in excess of $3.4 billion, with further forecast interest rate cuts expected to give buyers added impetus to act quickly before pricing increases.”

Those deals include Westpoint Blacktown for around $900 million, Macquarie Centre for $830 million, The Perron/GPT Retail partnership in WA for $482 million, and Northland, Victoria for $385 million.