Westfield Helensvale

Westfield Helensvale also referred to as Helensvale Town Centre, is a shopping centre at Helensvale on the Gold Coast in South East Queensland, Australia. It opened in 2005.
It is the first Westfield for the Gold Coast and includes Coles, Kmart, ALDI, Target and Woolworths as majors as well as a food court with McDonald's, KFC and Subway. It also provides optimum access to Helensvale Station. When approval for construction of the centre was requested by Westfield, it was suggested that the Helensvale location was too close to existing centres at Southport (Australia Fair) and Runaway Bay (Runaway Bay Shopping Village). The Gold Coast City Council argued that the planned Westfield Coomera (about 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) up the M1) would cater for the catchment. Westfield Helensvale was built mainly because Coomera Town Centre, which is planned to be the true heart of the region, was hitting obstacles in the ways of planning. Part of the outcome of that debate was that part of the Westfield Centre was meant to have the appearance of an outdoor shopping street connecting the train station through to the older Helensvale shops nearby. However, since the older shops are located across a major road they have been refurbished for local shopping. The Westfield Helensvale shopping centre has predominately mall enclosed shopping and only a few shops open to outside traffic. Many other Westfield shopping centres conversely are often fully enclosed malls, however the company is redeveloping a number of sites (such as Garden City) to include outdoor, piazza style areas.
== Parking and transportation ==
Westfield Helensvale has 2,000 car parking spaces, all of which are free. The shopping centre is adjacent to Helensvale railway station, which is serviced by various buses and trains to local areas and Brisbane.
Category:Malls in Australia
Category:International Malls
Category:Shopping Malls
Category:Malls that opened in 2005