All 19 lots in stage one and two of the development have been sold, while more than 79 per cent of the land available in stages three and four have been pre-sold prior to construction commencing on any of the buildings.

Development director for The Gateway, Bob Walsh, has announced the four new retailers coming to The Gateway, where they will join Metro Petroleum, Oporto, KFC and Imagine Childcare.

READ ALSO: Imagine Childcare the first business to open at The Gateway, Kelso

Outdoor adventure retailer Anaconda, Harris Scarfe Home, and Beacon Lighting will all enjoy highway frontage, while existing Bathurst retailer Harvey Norman will move to The Gateway from its current location in Pat O'Leary Drive.

It will be like coming home for the Harvey Norman team, which for years occupied a prominent corner site opposite The Gateway before moving to the former Masters site in 2020.

"We have a long history of serving the people of Bathurst but have not been able to establish a store to our latest standards and specifications," representatives for Harvey Norman said.

"The Gateway site offers us the ability to deliver an ideal store in size and form.

"Our new store will be over 5000 square metres and will be the largest Harvey Norman store in the Central West region."

READ ALSO: Total Tools expanding to Bathurst, taking over old Harvey Norman site

Anaconda and Harris Scarfe Home are being brought to The Gateway by Canberra-based Caerus Property, whose portfolio includes the four businesses already established in the Kelso development.

Since then, Caerus Property has acquired four lots in stage two of the development.

Beacon Lighting will also be a coup for Bathurst.

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"We saw this site as a key regional hub and it will be our first store in the Central West region," Beacon Lighting CEO Glen Robinson said.

"At around 1000 square metres, it will be a flagship store for Beacon and with the lots purchased, we'll build an additional 2500 to 3000 square metres of showrooms to attract other complimentary large format retailers to further reinforce The Gateway appeal as a homemaker centre."

Mr Walsh said The Gateway's four new retailers should be up and running by the end of 2023.

The development applications for Anaconda and Harris Scarfe have already been lodged and Mr Walsh said Bathurst Regional Council was being "very proactive and supportive" of the plans.

"That should come out in the next few months and you should see those stores built over 2023, so I anticipate they'll be open towards the end of that year," he said.

He has been pleased to see The Gateway gaining momentum in recent years.

"It's been 10 years or so in the making and a lot of that has been progressing along in different planning stages and rezoning stages for the whole thing, but certainly it's just taken off in the last couple of years and I think that is linked a bit to the COVID period, when both the regions became much more popular than they were and also the homemaker-style retailing was taking off with people ordering online and picking it up from the store," he said.

"Retailers like Harvey Norman and Anaconda have really boomed during this period.

"We're actually delighted with the way it is turning out and we are getting some very good quality new retailers coming to town."

The new retailers are expected to tie in well with the existing retailers and together they are expected to position The Gateway as Bathurst's premier homemaker destination.

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