Groaning at the seams, Chadstone’s only way is up

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Standing on the balcony of the new Urban Alley brewery under construction at Chadstone Shopping Centre, you look out over sweeping views of the surrounding suburbs and back to the CBD.

Chadstone is booming: visitations are up by almost a third, and on The Age’s visit to the shopping centre behemoth on a Tuesday in September, the car parks are largely full.

Hotel Chadstone MGallery is 12 storeys high and Chadstone is pushing for a 60-metre height limit for the shopping centre.

For a shopping centre groaning at the seams, the only way is up with Chadstone’s buildings heading ever skyward to maintain the centre’s existing footprint. If the centre owners have their way, it would reach close to 20 storeys.

Urban Alley is almost tripling in size, increasing from a 150-seat venue in the shopping centre’s “social quarter” to a two-storey, 420-seat venue.

“We’re at capacity there,” general manager Linda Sali says of the existing venue. “Because Chadstone’s a home for so many people, in terms of as a meeting place and also with all the office buildings that are here too, there’s just so many people.”

Leading a tour around the construction site where the new brewery is being built, Chadstone centre manager Daniel Boyle says the shopping centre continues to change.

Daniel Boyle, Chadstone centre manager, on a tour of the construction of Urban Alley’s new brewery bar at the shopping centre.

“As Chadstone continue to evolve, retail will always be at its heart,” he says. “With the introduction of luxury in 2009, a five-star hotel in 2019 and then dining and entertainment as a hero precinct in 2023, there’s no doubt that from your grocery shop right through to the nighttime entertainment is what the shift is in the use of shopping centres in Australia.”

Chadstone is operated by Vicinity Centres, which reported a 36 per cent uplift in visitation to the shopping centre in the fourth quarter of the financial year in its 2025 annual report. That’s despite its limited accessibility on foot, bike, or public transport.

Boyle says Chadstone will continue to get busier as it opens up an additional 20,000 square metres of commercial office space in February to house 2500 office workers, including those of homewares business Adairs and the head office for discount retailer Kmart.

Chadstone’s continued expansion has been within the shopping centre’s existing footprint, including the centre’s Market Pavilion, which opened in March.

Chadstone opened its fresh food focused Market Pavilion in March.

“With the Market Pavilion, we actually took that real estate back by building a 10,000 square-metre loading and logistics hub underground and then the retail pushed out into essentially what was back-of-house and loading areas,” Boyle says.

The shopping centre has to go either underground or skyward and Boyle says the Social Quarter, which has cinemas, Urban Alley and an Archie Brothers arcade, is a good example of this.

“This sits on top of a car park structure; it is essentially the fifth level of a four-level car park structure,” he says. “There’s certainly opportunities where we could go underground or above ground on grade [single level] car parks … but there are opportunities to grow in a number of areas without expanding them.”

Chadstone and the surrounding area have been earmarked as one of the state government’s activity centres, but the height limits for the centre are still being determined.

Vicinity has pushed for height limits of 60 metres – roughly the equivalent of 20 storeys in a typical building – which it says will reflect existing conditions along Dandenong Road. Hotel Chadstone is already 12 storeys high.

A community consultation carried out by the state government and published in March this year noted “confusion that the shopping centre would expand its footprint within the core boundary” and concerns that “there is already too much traffic and inadequate carparking in the area, and increased population will exacerbate this.”

The City of Stonnington raised concerns that the designated catchment area for the activity centre is too big and would require some residents to walk 22 minutes to reach the Chadstone Shopping Centre.

In 2024, the Activity Centre Standard Advisory Committee said it did not support the application of a walkable catchment to the Chadstone Activity Centre.

Visitations are up at Chadstone Shopping Centre.

“The shopping centre site and its immediate surrounds are not pedestrian-friendly environments,” it found. “The shopping centre has been designed around access by car and bus. The shopping centre is not permeable, and … the surrounding roads (including the key entry points into the shopping centre) present a hostile environment for pedestrians.”

Unlike the majority of the activity centres which are clustered around train lines, Chadstone is heavily car dependent with the shopping centre’s 11,500 parking spaces making it the third-largest car park in Australia, only eclipsed by Tullamarine Airport and Sydney Airport.

Boyle says it is too early to tell how the designation of Chadstone as an activity centre will change the shopping centre, but believes it is likely to lead to even more visits.

“Densification of housing on the perimeter will change the way that Chadstone is used, particularly as that nighttime third place in people’s life,” he said. “That high density of living and that greater population will no doubt translate into higher frequency of visits and greater spend at Chadstone overall.”

The Percy Treyvaud Memorial Dog Park sits on Chadstone’s perimeter.

At the Percy Treyvaud Memorial Dog Park on Chadstone’s northern perimeter, residents walking their dogs are undeterred by the prospect of the shopping centre looming even taller on the horizon.

“I’d be all for it,” Roger Clark says. “We don’t have to worry about parking, that hasn’t been a concern for us because we just walk there.”

Clark’s only complaint is the long-promised trackless tram line, which was first proposed by former premier Daniel Andrews ahead of the 2018 election and has still not eventuated.

“We have been waiting for a tram line to come along for a long time,” he says.

Ange James says Chadstone’s increasing size means traffic congestion in the area can be an issue, but the benefit of living close to the shopping centre outweighs any inconvenience.

“Living on Chadstone Road, come Saturday and Sunday, it’s a car park, ... it can take time, or even crossing the road nearby can take up to five minutes,” she says. “But it just comes with the territory ... we love it here.”