Chadstone 3148 Chadstone 3148

Chadstone, a residential suburb 13 km. south-east of Melbourne, is best known for having metropolitan Melbourne's largest super-regional shopping centre. (Highpoint, Maribyrnong, is the other super-regional centre.)

The name comes from Chadstone Road, which was laid out in 1912-13 in Malvern East. The road name probably came form the Chad stone church, north of Malvern Hills, England. The stone church came about by St. Chad ordering the seventh century King Wulf to build a stone church to expiate his guilt for murdering his two Christian sons.

Chadstone was an early postwar suburb bounded by Belgrave Road, Dandenong Road, Warrigal Road and Gardiners Creek. Because of changes to postcode boundaries "Chadstone"doubled in area by extension east of Warrigal Road to Huntingdale Road by the early 1980s. Within a decade the Chadstone postcode was restricted to east of Warrigal Road., absorbing areas previously better known as Holmsglen and Jordanville. The original Chadstone was thus put in the Malvern East postcode, satisfying many residents who preferred the cachet of Malvern being applied to their houses, with implications for improved values.

The railway line was extended along Chadstone's northern edge in 1929-30, and there was land subdivision on its western side (near where the unsuccessful Outer Circle Railway had run), and in the south-eastern corner near the original Oakleigh township. In the middle of all this, however, the Convent of the Good Shepherd held extensive paddocks on which cattle grazed until the mid 1950s.

As the western subdivision filled with postwar housing a primary school was opened in 1953, and by the mid 1950s house construction was occurring east of Warrigal Road.

The Myer department store, Melbourne, undertook overseas studies of shopping trends and by 1953 Kenneth Myer was convinced that retailing's future lay in the American style of drive-in shopping centres. Myer first acquired land well out of Melbourne at Burwood East, but advice from the American Larry Smith Organisation concluded that the optimal growth area was in the south-eastern suburbs. The Convent of the Good Shepherd was positioned on a greenfields site that had the added advantage of being surrounded by a middle-class catchment with a propensity for family shopping. Myer purchased the Convent's open land and in September, 1960, opened the shopping centre with 33,000 square metres of floor space. In 1983 the Chadstone shopping centre was purchased by the Gandel Group, a cinema complex was added in 1985 and by 1996 it had 94,000 square metres of floor space. It has a department store, two discount department stores and 325 other shops. Expansion involved acquisition of the convent and St. Anthony's school.

On a local-suburban scale the Chadstone high school was opened in 1962, and a neighbourhood shopping centre in Chadstone has shown how a local centre satisfies residents' shopping needs when it offers convenience over a long walk to the car park at the super-regional centre.

The remaining Catholic institution, Christ College, became a campus of the Australian Catholic University in 1991. By the early 1990s Chadstone had completed a cycle of postwar family growth, and the high school was closed in 1991.

Chadstone, east of Warrigal Road, is bisected by the South Eastern Arterial road. Its northern and southern boundaries are the railway line and the Scotchmans Creek linear park and public golf course. It has a campus of Salesian college, a state secondary college, a primary school and a neighbourhood shopping centre.

Chadstone's median house price in 1987 was the same as the median for metropolitan Melbourne and in 1996 it was 115% of the metropolitan median.

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