Rundle Mall is arguably the most well-known retail strip in Australia; it’s the centre of Adelaide; it’s where everything happens! But it’s somewhat misleading to describe it as a single strip, an entity on its own; Rundle Mall is the centre of a huge city retail precinct. The Adelaide Economic Development Agency (AEDA) is custodian of the precinct; it’s their business to make sure it succeeds…

Today, superlatives are grossly overused. We live in a world in which the desire to stand out or be different is almost a common trait. In the world of social media, superlatives are used to describe the most normal situations; the word ‘iconic’ is a prime example. It’s unfortunate, really, because the superlatives somewhat lose their effect.

However, Adelaide’s Rundle Mall is iconic.

It has been for nearly half a century, opening in 1976 after the then Premier, Don Dunstan, closed a section of Rundle Street, ripped up the roads and laid pavers to create a pedestrian mall and Adelaide’s retail centre in the heart of the CBD.

Since then, the mall has thrived beyond all expectations and has become more than just a thriving retail hub, energising city life and transforming itself into a true experiential precinct, the social and cultural epicentre of Adelaide, and the number one destination for all visitors to the city.

At 520 metres, Rundle Mall is the longest outdoor shopping mall in the southern hemisphere. With a pedestrian flow of some 800,000 per week or more than 42 million a year, it’s arguably the busiest shopping mall in Australia – in fact, total visits to Rundle Mall in 2023 were 27% higher than pre-pandemic levels.

In SCN terms, Rundle Mall is like four Big Guns rolled into one. It houses brands including Myer, David Jones, Kmart, Woolworths, Coles and most of the national mini-major and specialty chains, including the exclusive South Australian stores for H&M, Apple, TAG Heuer, Sephora and Tiffany & Co. But in shopping centre and retail terms, it’s a mistake to consider Rundle Mall as a single strip with retail on either side. Rundle Mall is the epicentre of a huge retail precinct bounded north-south by North Terrace and Grenfell Street and east-west by Pulteney Street and King William Street (see diagram below).

For example, the Myer Centre extends from the northern side of Rundle Mall right through to North Terrace, while Adelaide Arcade stretches from the southern side through to Grenfell Street.

In addition to some 15 arcades and centres, numerous laneways and small streets wind their way through the precinct, adding character and interest thanks to a variety of specialised merchandise offerings and services. The precinct also houses more than 5,000 car parking spaces.

Charter Hall last year completed its $450 million development, the largest ever commercial real estate project in Adelaide’s CBD. Extending between King William Road and James Place, it’s part of the Rundle Mall Precinct and features Kings Lane, which offers 3,600m2 of premium retail, food and beverage, and lifestyle space.

In all, the vast Rundle Mall Precinct comprises some 1,000 retail, services, and food and beverage businesses, an entertainment precinct with three of Funlab’s brands, various pop-up tenancies and kiosks dotted along the mall. This keeps vacancy rates on the mall as low as 6.6% in Q2 2024, the lowest of any strip mall in the country.

ADL Fashion Week bar in Gawler Place Canopy

As is the case with other major retail precincts in city centres, not only in Australia but also across other parts of the world, property ownership is diverse and multitudinous. Yet this precinct has a marked and somewhat unique distinction.

A subsidiary of the City of Adelaide, the Adelaide Economic Development Agency (AEDA) was created to drive economic growth in the city, to attract investment and boost tourism.

Working closely with businesses, industry groups, state government agencies and other relevant organisations, AEDA delivers a range of programs designed to stimulate the city’s economic growth with a focus on business growth, investment attraction, growing the visitor economy, residential growth, marketing the city as a whole, and promoting Rundle Mall as Adelaide’s premier shopping destination.

These are the AEDA stated objectives, and the latter is what gives the Rundle Mall Precinct a unique distinction. AEDA’s Executive Manager, Rundle Mall, is Andrew White; SCN met him at the Mall’s Balls – arguably the state’s best-known meeting place – for a tour of the mall and a detailed ‘insider view’ on what AEDA’s role is when it comes to this precinct.

“Quite simply, we’ve got a vested interest in making this retail precinct successful,” he says. “We are here to future proof the precinct, support the attraction of new brands that our customers know and want, and deliver events, activations and experiences that drive visitation and encourage spending.”

White is keen to emphasise AEDA has no interest in any sort of control over retail operations in the precinct; the relationships and agreements between property owners and tenants remains between those two parties. What AEDA wants to do is to assist in any way it can to make that relationship successful.

“Take, for example, the subject of retail trading hours. When there is a major event on in the city, we help retailers capitalise on the extra foot traffic by requesting an exemption from the State Government to trade longer and later, and they’ve been very supportive, extending trading hours during the Adelaide Fringe, for AFL Gather Round and for major retail events like Black Friday and Christmas shopping.”

AFL Gather Round activation in Rundle Mall

While the majority of the 400-plus activations and events in the mall each year are held by brands to reach more customers and launch new products, they are run by AEDA to capitalise on major events happening in the city. The annual AFL Gather Round event attracts some 70,000 visitors to the city; hotel rooms are fully booked, and for several days, the restaurants, bars and entertainment venues are packed.

This year, AEDA worked with the AFL to host activations and stage its own events such as autograph signings, player meet and greets, live viewing sites and pop-up bars in Rundle Mall and footy enthusiasts flocked to the mall to be involved. It’s a similar story with the LIV Golf tournament – Australian golfers Cameron Smith and Marc Leishman mingled with fans in Rundle Mall against the backdrop of a giant, inflatable golf ball. And, of course, there’s more – too much and too many to list, but perhaps the largest and most famous of all, is the annual Adelaide Fringe, the largest arts festival in the southern hemisphere and second in the world to the Edinburgh Festival.

This year, the four-week festival attracted some four million visitors and more than one million tickets were sold, and it all happened on Rundle Mall’s doorstep, in the city’s East End. The fun and frivolity of the major festival was extended into Rundle Mall with AEDA’s MallFest, which featured extended trading hours on Saturday evenings, various food and beverage pop-ups, DJs and a curated program of free performances by Adelaide Fringe artists for shoppers to enjoy.

MallFest 2024 entry statement

As we write this story, Urban Kitchen in Rundle Mall is in full swing, a ten-day event in an open, specially built structure in the mall’s centre. ‘You watch, chefs cook, you taste,’ spruiks the publicity material. It’s part of Tasting Australia, one of the country’s longest-running eating and drinking festivals, and showcases South Australian food and wine with live cooking demonstrations and masterclasses all organised and marketed by AEDA.

In terms of food and wine offerings, Rundle Mall’s a destination in its own right, with a number of higher end restaurants and bars within the precinct.

While these events and activations deliver significant benefits for traders – Rundle Mall’s award winning Black Friday campaign saw sharp increases in sales, foot traffic, market share and average transaction value – AEDA is far more than just a promotions, marketing and events agency for the shopping precinct.

Urban Kitchen during Tasting Australia

Its broader and more fundamental role is to attract investment to the City of Adelaide, and there’s a lot of that happening, with South Australia’s economy the best performing of any state in the country, according to CommSec’s State of the States report.

Tourism is booming, with ten new hotels opening in the city since 2020, and March this year seeing the strongest month on record for Adelaide hotels both in number of rooms occupied and average nightly revenue. Two of the state’s major universities, University of South Australia and University of Adelaide are merging to form Adelaide University, which will rank in the top 1% worldwide and educate approximately 55,000 students annually by 2034.

What that means is opportunity’s aplenty, and if you want to capitalise on all that’s happening and open a store or conduct a $1 billion development in the Rundle Mall Precinct, then you’ve got a pretty powerful ally on your side.

Andrew White told SCN much of his time is spent advising and informing potential investors. “We’re not a landlord, we’re more custodians of Rundle Mall,” he explains. “We don’t charge for our advice, we’re not profit-orientated, we’re measured by the success of those in the Rundle Mall precinct. If they succeed, then Adelaide succeeds, and that’s what we’re all about.”

This profile feature is published in the latest edition of SCN magazine. Premium members can view the full digital magazine online here.