EDITOR’S COMMENT When I first joined EG back in 2004 – yes, I know, how can I possibly have been of working age in 2004? – I began as the retail reporter. It was one of the best patches to cover. It was fun, a bit easier to access for this relatively green journalist, and there were big deals and big developments happening.
It was a sexy sector that gave this young cub reporter the opportunity to get her teeth into some really juicy stories. And for a while it was booming, so people were very loose-lipped.
Then everything changed.
There were still fun stories to chase (we journos love a bit of distress) and there was a real need for intelligence sharing (EG’s raison d’être) so that players in the retail property sector could navigate the stormy seas they had been thrust into – albeit some will argue that the long-range forecast had told them there were troubles ahead well in advance.
It has been a really tough time for retail. The sector has had to come to terms with a complete transformation. It has had to say goodbye to some well-known names, it has had to carry some big losses, it has had to rebase and it has had to get comfortable with a new normal. A different way of doing things and a different way of serving its customers – the shoppers, the occupiers, the financiers, everyone.
But retail is still here, as former intu chair, current P-Three consultant and all-round retail guru John Strachan points out in this week’s EG Interview. We all still like to buy stuff – or perhaps rent it – we just do it in a different way. We want different experiences from it.
We have to – as NewRiver’s Allan Lockhart explains – be a bit more sensible and a little less ego-driven. Big isn’t always better.
Retail’s story of rebalancing, of mass doom and gloom, of well-told and much-repeated tales of its death should serve as a bit of a comforter for the office property sector. It is the same story, after all.
Just like the shopper, the worker wants something different. We still want to work (mostly), but we want to do it in different ways – we want more from our work and our workplaces.
When we go to work, we want to feel like we’re doing something beneficial. That the places we work in give something back to the community and the planet. We want to be entertained and feel like we’re getting something back.
Just like we didn’t just want to go into a shop and hand over our money without feeling like we were getting something more than the objects we were buying, we don’t want to go into a workplace and feel like we are only there to pick up a pay cheque.
It is really easy to pick up on tales of the death of the office and yes, there will be casualties. Not every office building is going to survive this period of transformation, not every business is going to need an office or physical space to work, but many still will. They’ll just be different. Better. Just like retail.
And this is the beautiful thing about real estate: everything is cyclical. What happens in one sector will inevitably happen in another. What goes up will always go down, then back up again, then down, and so on.
And it does this because this is a sector that is based on us. It is driven by the needs and demands of human beings and as we evolve, it does too.
But even in our evolution we are pretty predictable. Human behaviours, political behaviours, economic behaviours – they all follow a pretty standard cycle.
The economy’s is 18 years: 14 years of expansion, four of recession. And in each of those recessionary periods the transformation takes place.
It happened for retail, now it’s happening in offices. And that is where the magic happens.
To send feedback, e-mail samantha.mcclary@eg.co.uk or tweet @samanthamcclary or @EGPropertyNews
