eKourier July 2017

PROPERTY

Spotlight on St Marys

Kim Simpson, Assistant Manager with Steve Fone, Centre Manager for St Marys

T he township of St Marys was first known as South Creek. The suburb is named after the parish church of St Mary Magdalene, built between 1837 and 1840 and situated between the Great Western Highway and King Street. It is one of the oldest churches in New South Wales that still has regular services. The area was first called South Creek because European settlement was originally centred along the banks of the creek. The name St Marys was first used when the St Mary’s Post Office was opened on 1st October 1840. The township formed part of a grant to Mary Putland (later married Sir Maurice O’Connell), the daughter of Governor William Bligh. KSS St Marys is located in the Southern Precinct of the Dunheved Business Park, this Business Park is one of the major employment precincts in the Penrith City local government area and plays a strategic role for business and employment growth in the City. The Dunheved Business Park was part of the original ADI (Australian Defence Industries) site and is surrounded by residential and industrial development. The St Marys centre was an old springs manufacturing site and was subdivided in to two lots, with one lot being developed into a Service Station and

is both positive and negative. On the positive side it is one of the busiest streets in the district so a lot of drop-in rentals and box purchases. On the negative side you can be stuck trying to get out for 10 minutes even turning left. Since we opened on the 25th November 2016 we have had exceptional growth to the point we are now at 75% occupancy by sqm, but more interestingly 84% by number of units. We have predominately personal storers (85%) even when it comes to our enterprise size units. It appears that the sole traders don’t care if the unit is in the private name or the company name. Kim Simpson the part time Assistant Manager has only been with KSS for three months. I have been a Centre Manager for four years now, having run Campbelltown1, Hoxton Park and Prospect before taking on St Marys when it opened. Our biggest challenge here is a really good one, there’s not enough units to rent. Going from 0% to 75% occupancy in just seven months with the only units we have for rent either 2.3UP or 22.5DR with nothing in between. Hurry up stage two! Steve Fone Kennards Self Storage St Marys NSW

the other becoming us.

The initial stage had six buildings built, four completely from scratch. One utilised the existing concrete slab and the other used the existing slab and frame. The stage two will be an additional multi-storey building similar to the three already built. For the present we use this open space for boat/car storage. Since we opened on the 25th November 2016 we have had exceptional growth to the point we are now at 75% occupancy by sqm, but more interestingly 84% by number of units. This gave us a total of 450 units with a total area of 6,479 sqm. The centre is a managed site being owned by the Baudinet family who also own the Cardiff and Mayfield sites. ‘

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Our location on 63-73 Christie Street

17 Kennards Kourier July 2017