Elsewhere- own your own plaza.

Yes, it's true- the catchily named Lane Cove Coles Centre is up for sale.

Now I don't pretend to understand all of this but it sure is some mighty fine real estate jargon:

• Coles Supermarket & 5 specialty tenants offered for the first time in 25 years
• Coles accounts for 73% of gross income - lease to July 2022 plus options
• Speciality tenants include a Cellarbrations Liquor, Green Grocer, Butcher, Hairdresser and Florist
• Prime location in Lane Cove, an affluent Lower North Shore suburb approx 9.5km to the north of the Sydney CBD
• Future development potential (subject to tenant & council approval)
• Net passing income $1,600,000 p.a approx

Anyway, there is also a video tour here which you can watch if so inclined. Closing date for expressions of interest is 5 September, so you only have a couple of weeks. Maybe call your bank manager today. 
If I owned it, I'd put a waterslide through that main atrium just for the hell of it, and build myself a penthouse apartment on the roof.

Burwood special.

Depite being the location of Australia's first drive in theatre, Burwood has always struck me as a staid suburban kind of place. This is one of the local plazas- Burwood Heights, on the corner of Middleborough Road & Burwood Highway:

It's not particularly good from the inside either, although it does boast two RSPCA op shops- one cheap and one as expensive as you like: $600 vintage Japanese tea set, anyone?

But down on the corner of Blackburn Road, the next main road along the highway, the old KMart has been revamped and extended into something called Burwood One.

This place is immense, wrapped around three sides of a fairly big carpark. Look at it- it even has a TAB:

The Coles sells clothes and televisions and homewares-y stuff as well as groceries and frankly it is hard to tell if you are in there or in KMart. Oh and did I mention they are both open 24 hours?

Some of the spaces inside are a bit random and brutal but overall I give the One a 10.

Mountain Gate Centre, Ferntree Gully

Your first impression of Mountain Gate (nb not to be confused with  Fountain Gate) depends on which way you approach. From the city:

"Hey yeah nice kinda rural-esque logo and it's got a Coles and that."
But if you are coming in from the other direction, from the Dandenongs side:

"Wow, what a stark Peter Saville/Bauhaus influenced design and it's got a Woolies with liquor and that".
This side of town is rich picking for non-uniform plazas and malls, and Mountain Gate doesn't disappoint. As you can see in this map, the place itself sprawls along the highway in a pretty unrestrained fashion, among the big box tyre stores and horse feed suppliers that line the roadsides out here. Great tile design on the outside of the toilet block, too.

Ivanhoe Plaza, Ivanhoe.

This is a friendly kind of place, up in the "nice" end of Ivanhoe:

Though their ashtray needs emptying:

And this bit of stuff in the central atrium bit is full of dead bugs and such. I wouldn't want to eat lunch under it:

20c trolleys! NO WAY.

Sadly the trolleys did indeed require a $1.00 or $2.00 coin. But on the bright side there is a greengrocers in here called the Froot Shop. Froot.