“A mildewed lump of elephant droppings,” is how Prince Charles famously described the 1960s-built Tricorn Centre, Portsmouth’s concrete calamity. For some of the city’s agents, the quote sums up the whole of Portsmouth’s retail market.
The hated “elephant droppings”, which has long dominated the city’s core retail centre, is now being torn down. And agents are desperate for Centros Miller, the Tricorn’s owner, to press ahead with its proposed 650,000 sq ft mixed-use scheme. They see it as the answer to satisfy a huge pent-up retail demand.
EGi’s Retail Requirements lists around 130 requirements for the city and edge of town. Zara, Accessorize, Warner Bros and Ikea are among the big names looking for space they cannot find either in Commercial Road’s Cascades Shopping Centre or at factory outlet Gunwharf Quays. Southsea, a retail centre a mile-and-a-half from the city centre, is also full.
Along with restaurants and homes, Canalside, the extension to Gunwharf, will provide 13,000 sq ft of shops. But this space will come nowhere near to soaking up demand.
There is a need also to restore a sense of pride to a city languishing behind Southampton’s revered retail provision. “The shops in Portsmouth are terrible and a poor relation to Southampton,” states Ross Moyler, senior surveyor with Vail Williams. These are harsh words, but it is true that the city is lagging behind its neighbour. Southampton is number seven in Experian’s 2004 retail rankings. Portsmouth fails to make the top 50.
The demolition of architect Owen Luder’s Tricorn Centre, which local heritage groups in March tried to have spot-listed, will, it is hoped, begin Portsmouth’s move up the rankings.
“The commercial outlook and credibility of Portsmouth has been substantially improved by the decision not to spot-list the building – so long as the demolition now takes place without delay,” says John Butt, surveyor with Young & Butt. “Having a major amount of the city-centre retailing floorspace mothballed for so long has substantially damaged the overall regeneration of Portsmouth.”
However, there is still the fear that something will stop the Tricorn’s replacement going ahead, halting the subsequent regeneration of the whole Northern Quarter, in which the centre sits. Since the Tricorn closed in the mid 1970s, there have been several aborted plans to demolish and rebuild it.
So deep-rooted is the fear that even the demolition, which finally started amid a blaze of publicity on 24 March, has failed to quell anxieties. “They’ve done little to it since they knocked down those first few bricks. It seems that it was a stunt for the public,” fumes Moyler. Austin Adams’ Bernie Cooper is equally worried. “The feeling is that this is finally happening, but I hope I have not spoken too soon.”
John Slater, deputy city planning manager for Portsmouth council, says demolition is, in fact, happening from the inside out, making it difficult for observers to see what is happening. And Tony Williams, development manager with Centros Miller, says the demolition is “progressing satisfactorily”, adding that tearing down the centre has a nine-month schedule. Referring to the replacement, he says: “We have just finished the first round of public consultation, and we are now embarking on the second round.”
Centros Miller hopes to apply for planning consent either by the end of 2004 or the start of 2005, with a proposed start date of March 2007 if the council approves. In the meantime, the area will become a 500-space car-park, allowing Centros Miller to generate income in the interim.
Agents are happy with the car-park plan. “It’s an opportunity to give something to the city until the development does happen,” says Garry Cherrett of Young & Butt.
While agents welcome the demolition, some are asking why Centros Miller has gone ahead before gaining permission for a replacement. They also question the time it has taken for plans to come to fruition. Slater responds by saying the council is anxious to see the empty building go as it is “an icon of the wrong nature”. He adds: “Major city-centre redevelopment doesn’t happen overnight, and some schemes have long gestation periods.”
Slater is confident the council will approve the proposed replacement because it has been working closely with Centros Miller on the plans for several years, including the decision to abandon the covered mall concept in favour of a series of mixed-use buildings. “The centre is not just going to be retail. It’s going to be a place where people will come in the evenings and use at all times of the day rather than just an extension of the Cascades Centre,” he says.
The scheme will have a major department store, the identity of which has become a source of speculation. Williams will only confirm that Centros Miller has a department store “interested”, while agents believe it is either John Lewis and/or Debenhams. Both have units in Southsea, but Bernie Cooper of Austin Adams believes the allure of a prime pitch could see one or both of them move.
But at the same time that agents are crying out for extra retail provision in the city centre, they are concerned about the impact this will have on Southsea. The departure of either John Lewis or Debenhams would be a blow for the area. Cooper says that Southsea is already “taking a hammering from Gunwharf”.
John Lewis, which owns the Knight & Lee department store in Southsea, says that there are no plans to move, and that Gunwharf has a different appeal and catchment to Knight & Lee’s. Debenhams says it cannot comment on such long-term possibilities.
There are no figures to gauge how Southsea is performing, although there is only one empty unit on Palmerston Street, the area’s main shopping pitch. But agents are concerned by the council’s failure to list the pitch as a sub-regional centre in the city plan, published in March, and there are fears that it could be sacrificed as a major shopping centre.
Slater says that the council is assessing what effect the Northern Quarter regeneration will have on not just Southsea, but also on Commercial Road and Gunwharf. He adds: “We see the Northern Quarter not just as a regeneration tool for the northern part of the city. It will lift the city as a whole.”
“Careful planning by Centros Miller in the redevelopment will enable the city centre to re-establish its role as the primal focal point for shopping,” says Butt. “If it did prove necessary to move a major department store from a smaller shopping area to reinforce the city’s overall shopping offer, then market forces should be allowed to proceed unhindered.”
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Portsmouth retail agents are hoping for positive changes to the city’s retail plan when the final version is published in early July. The plan is part of the Portsmouth City Local Plan, which will shape the city over the next seven years. After public consultation, the plan went before government inspector Stephen Amos last year. But in his report published earlier this year, Amos was unhappy with the retail section. He criticised the council for not updating the old retail plan, which was derived from a retail study of consumer need drawn up in 1998. As a result, Amos was not able to recommend the plan. Amos says it would be “inappropriate to allocate edge-of-centre and out-of-centre sites” for retail development. However, this has led some commentators to claim that the inspector has ruled out any out-of-town retail development. Not so, believes John Butt, a surveyor with Young & Butt. He says Amos’s report means that development cannot happen until the council finalises the document. Until the retail plan is in place, developments will be judged on a site-by-site basis. John Slater, deputy city planning officer, says: “We are now commissioning a new shopping study.” |
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Portsmouth is not dominated by huge office schemes. Indeed, most of the larger office deals happen outside the city, on the business parks alongside the M27. Derek Holloway, a director with Holloway Iliffe & Mitchell, jumps to the market’s defence, saying: “The small market, up to 3,000 sq ft, is very active, especially for units of around 1,000 sq ft. Both local and non-local firms are looking to take space.” Even so, Portmouth’s agents are upset by suggestions that there is a lack of growth in the city-centre market. Last year saw take-up of only around 50,000 sq ft, mostly of small units of 1,000 sq ft to 3,000 sq ft. Outside the city core, in the prime areas between Portsmouth and Southampton, Russell Mogridge of Hughes Ellard says he has seen “a strengthening in the market with good take-up”. In fact, the first quarter of this year saw take-up of around 30,000sq ft, primarily around Segensworth and Whitely. “This year there will be a continuing trend for businesses to locate outside the city centre,” says Mogridge. Older city-centre offices are fetching between £12-£14 per sq ft, while prime grade A at the Prudential’s Solent Business Park near junction 9 of the M27 has reached £19 per sq ft. |
