Retailers keen to get space close to Chinatown have leased a string of empty shops in the Target Centre on Bourke Street.
The strip of shops in the arcade adjoining the Target store at 222 Bourke Street have leased ahead of schedule, according to CBRE retail agent Zelman Ainsworth, who struck the deals with Ting Ting Gao and Tan Thach.
While fashion retailers Ugg Boots and City Chic have renewed their leases at $2587 and $2602 a square metre, food and beverage operators have taken out the remaining spaces.
Li Ji Ma Hot Pot is leasing 115 square metres at $2435 a square metre; Royal Tea, a cake shop, has taken 20 square metres at $3700 a square metre; and Chinese restaurant Taiju has signed up for 30 square metres at $3050 a square metre.
Arcades, with their off-strip retail spaces, can sometimes struggle to lease but the Target Centre opens to both Chinatown at Little Bourke Street and attracts foot traffic from students at Monash College upstairs.
Traffic might ease next year when Monash moves its private college students to Docklands.
Ms Gao said the increase in international students living in the city has created demand for more amenities and shops, particularly from Chinese retailers in this pocket of the CBD.
"We are noticing more Asian-themed retail businesses lease shops around the Chinatown precinct,." Mr Thach said.
The Target building and adjoining arcade in the Target Centre is owned by Singapore investor Phillip Lim, who paid $88 million for the complex in 2011.
Down the hill in the Bourke Street Mall, another Singaporean landlord, Hua Sin Tay, is planning to completely revamp the The Walk arcade with a hotel mooted for the building above.
Agents Cushman & Wakefield and TT Global are running a campaign to lease empty space in the ailing arcade to temporary pop-up shops before any development gets underway.
