Waterford Plaza Shopping Centre

Waterford Plaza has had a facelift but don’t mistake it from losing its core business values. The focus of the shops and their selection serve to meet the needs of the university student population in the area. There’s a Coles, IGA, fruit and vegetable shop all within close proximity.
Surrounding these is a high density of eateries providing an array of hawker options, dessert, café, burgers, and more. You can almost travel around the world eating here. There’s Singaporean, Malaysian, Japanese, South African, Mexican, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and Italian food options, (and probably others I’m unaware of). Most of the plaza is made up of eateries at student friendly prices.
The car park is as unfriendly as ever. Small cars can navigate just comfortably but there are several blind corners and those unfamiliar may get caught out with the one way nature of some parts. There is roof top parking but it is limited. The place to park is still towards the rear of the plaza away from the main thoroughfare and walk.

Nice mix of food places — korean, japanese, chinese, coffee shop, nandos.
It was pouring down with rain when I came here which did make me pop in and out. From the looks of it this is a really nice shopping centre with a little bit for everyone. It also seemed pretty clean and nice so if you did come you would feel pretty safe.

So my favourite shopping centre ever will always be Garden City becasue it just literally has everything I’ll ever need (and is less than 10 minutes away). But coming in at a close second is Waterford Plaza.
The Waterford Plaza used to just be a stock standard suburban shopping centre, Kararwara Shopping Centre, complete with Coles, cool liquor store with Belgian beer and shit and KFC and Domino’s on the perimeter. But with the expansion of the Waterford area, Karawara Shopping Centre became Waterford Plaza. A through road was built on the edge of the shopping centre for direct access to the actual suburb of Karawara. But on the other side came a whole bunch of awesome shit.
The biggest draw is the Supa IGA. It’s open till 11:30pm every day and it has everything. It’s a tad expensive on certain items and I do routinely notice the shopping bill creeping up slightly every time I shop there. But the range is outstanding. They even have a mini Dare fridge that plays Dare ads on a small TV at the top and a Ben and Jerry’s fridge on display at the front. Self-​serve checkouts and PayPass mean I never need to interact with anyone, perfect for the socially awkward loner.
There’s also a Reject Shop, decently priced pharmacy, Theobrama Chocolate Lounge (the only other one in Perth being in Fremantle) and Hippo Creek, which I have already talked about in a separate review. There’s still sites available as the real estate signs on Manning Road indicate so who knows what’s next?
I recently moved to Salter Point so this is now an effortless drive down Manning Road for me. However, after the upgrade, I used to travel down from Willetton to Waterford Plaza all the time, opting it over usual outlets such Southlands for my shopping.
There are two big drawbacks to the place though. First of all is the parking situation. The parking near the perimeter of the store is completely shit. There is not enough bays at any given time. There is plenty of parking in the old Chicken Treat parking lot or the even older original Coles parking lot, if you’re willing to walk. But if you want a space anywhere near the lane entrance, you’re out of luck there. Even with the above ground carpark, it’s still a terrible parking layout.
The second gripe I have is exit points. As I managed to find out pretty quickly, it’s easy to enter Waterford Plaza from Manning Road however I can’t exit going back towards Salter Point anywhere on Manning Road. I have to utilize several suburban Karawara streets (Gillon Drive, Jackson Road, Walana Drive, etc) in order to drive down Manning Road heading west. It can get fairly annoying, especially if you start realizing you’re going there everyday.
Love it. Garden City always has a special place in my heart as the best shopping centre ever. But number 2 will always be Waterford Plaza. Despite it’s flaws, it still has everything I’ll ever need.

Having used to live in Como we used to use this centre fairly regularly. In fact it used to be our local shops for food.
They have seen a large development and increase in square footage that makes this a better place to shop than before.
Although the horrible parking situation still exists, this is enough to turn me off this place. Small bays with a massive turnover of cars means that your car will get damaged.
If you like within walking distance which I assume lots of students do then its awesome. I you have to drive in don’t bother during the day.
In the evening it’s worth a visit. They have lots of decent places to eat, its a vibrant place with plenty of energy. Lots of foreign and local fast food places make it a favourite.

Why wasn’t Waterford Plaza this good when I was living on Curtin Campus?! All we had then was KFC, Coles, a liquor store, and some Asian eateries. All you need as a uni student, I hear you say? Well, no, not when you consider what they have now: Ice cream store, burger store, a spiffy IGA superstore, Nandos, kebabs, a luxury Chocolate retailer, so many indulgences to rid the pain of student accomodation. All you Curtin kids: you’ve got it good. I mean, it’s still Waterford, and I don’t think anything can gloss over that detail, but generally the offerings make it a lot nicer.

When I used to live in Salter Point, fellow students deemed Waterford Plaza as some sort of Holy Grail of sustenance. I’m not entirely sure why, because I found the place overwhelmingly average. I’m a student, yes, but dammit, give me some form of titillation other than suburban banality!
Food and other essentials suffice for a three star rating, I suppose. The plaza’s main customers are students who live on Curtin University Campus or nearby. They’ve got Subway, KFC, Burger Edge, a kebab shop, some cafes, an optometrist, a hairdresser a news agency, Coles, a pricey fruit shop, Priceline, a few banks, Australia Post and a beauty salon, just to name a few of the retailers. It’s substantial and it suffices in serving the student community with basic needs, and their late trading hours are certainly a plus. Different sides of the shopping centre have different trading hours though, with the north side (which includes Coles), being closed on Sundays. Bummer.