Med in Ulster: After forging a successful career on the Continent, Paul Sargent is launching Multi Development’s first project in the UK
The first time EG Retail met Paul Sargent, managing director for Multi Development UK, was five years ago at his company’s newly established offices in Belfast. He strutted across the bare boards, past a model of the Victoria Square shopping development, looking every inch a Continental gentleman, sporting shoulder-length hair and an open-necked shirt.
Only a few weeks previously, he had been transferred from Multi’s Portugese retail projects, where he had worked for eight years. The tan had yet to fade.
Knowing Belfast as well as EG Retail does, we enquired, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, into what Sargent had done that was so wrong to get him transferred from sunny Mediterranean climes to a grey Belfast that was still developing and growing. Sargent stared ahead and didn’t answer. The comment hung in the air.
Five years on, Sargent, a tad more like a Belfast man, now with short back and sides but still wearing an open-necked shirt, prepares to let observation, rather than commentary, answer the question. With the same purposeful strut, he is keen to show off the £400m mixed-use development, which was opened only five days previously by a full-voiced Ian Paisley, with deputy first minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly Martin McGuinness at his side.
Just like that unlikely political partnership, the province’s first city has undergone a transformation unlike that of any other UK conurbation over the 10 years since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. The havoc wrought by the 32-year-old conflict meant that the city had a lot of catching up to do, particularly in terms of retail space.
But on the day of EG Retail’s visit it felt as if those dark times had returned. Only 100 yards from the entrance to Victoria Square’s anchor store, House of Fraser, two floors collapsed in a building under construction. Dozens of ambulances, fire crews and police vehicles raced to the scene. The sirens booming out, so close to what is being hailed as a symbol of Belfast’s ongoing progress, frightened many people who thought that the centre had been attacked.
But this is the Belfast of the future, and central to its progress is the development of a new retail quarter. After a hotly fought contest, that task was given to Netherlands-based Multi Development (see panel p40), which has been involved in such projects across Europe for the past 26 years.
Talking while giving the guided tour, Sargent’s pride in the scheme is evident. Before joining Multi in 1995 he was a surveyor in Donaldsons’ Lisbon office, where he advised Sonae. “This is Multi’s benchmark in Britain,” Sargent says, adding that the message he really wants to get across is that Multi Development is in the UK to stay.
With Victoria Square now opened, the company’s focus shifts across the Irish Sea, to Bath and Wolverhampton. Southgate in Bath, which is being anchored by Debenhams, is 50% let to “people who are not already in the city”, says Sargent. Summer Row in Wolverhampton, which was a Chapman Taylor scheme, has more in common with Victoria Square in that it is a city centre regeneration scheme. It is 40% let, and is also anchored by Debenhams, along with Marks and Spencer which signed last month to take 100,000 sq ft.
As the credit crunch continues to bite, Sargent admits that “some retailers are being more cautious” about where to take units. However, he believes that, with Bath not scheduled to open until 2009, and Wolverhampton a year later, by then “the economic squeeze will be out of the way”. He says: “In six months’ time, we will see where we are.”
Sargent also states that he would be very happy to have as an anchor the likes of Tesco, with a big fashion element. In fact, he believes that not all schemes need anchor stores.
One thing he is adamant about is that Multi won’t dilute or change schemes.
Clearly, this is a bugbear for Sargent, who feels that Multi’s development technique had come under scrutiny because it is a European developer with no UK track record before Victoria Square.
“Everyone has always commented that we hadn’t done [a scheme] in the UK,” he says, “but this [Victoria Square] is the proof of the pudding.”
Referring to projects such as Grosvenor’s Liverpool One, LandSec’s St David’s 2, in Cardiff, and Westfield in London, he says: “There is 4m sq ft coming to the UK market [within the next 12 months], and it was important for us to be the first of those, otherwise we could get lost in the mire. It isn’t as important for the likes of Hammerson or LandSec, because they are already established here.”
Putting a call out to other developers, Sargent says that Multi is keen to do joint ventures. “Projects now are so big that we want to share the risks with other developers,” he says.
Without naming names, a guarded Sargent, who says he wants to open “a project a year”, says Multi is looking at four new UK sites.
“Most are shopping centres owned by institutions, and there is going to be a significant new build,” he says.
Dublin is also on the radar, with two out-of-town schemes targeted. Will there be scope for further development in Northern Ireland? “There’s potentially something we are looking at,” he says. “There are not many locations, but we can do developments as small as 250,000 sq ft.”
Multi has also been shortlisted for Legal & General’s and Schroders’ £750m regeneration of Bracknell town centre, and the feeling in the market is that it is going to win.
“The UK is a key market for Multi,” says Sargent. “There’s a lot of focus here. Of course, we have big markets like Turkey, and we are in the Ukraine, but the UK is a market where you can show the best of the best.”
Sargent ends by revealing his next ambition. “Now,” he says, “we want to win awards for what we are building.”
Paul Sargent
2003: Managing director, Multi Development UK
1997-2002: Commercial director southern Europe, Multi Development
1995-1996: Joins Multi Development as international operations manager
1992-1994: Donaldsons Portugal, head of retail
1988-1991: Donaldsons, surveyor
Hobbies: Painting, golf, cooking and travel
Married, with three children
Victoria Square: open for business
Victoria Square was the first major retail development since the opening of Westfield’s Castle Court in 1990. “Castle Court is dated. Victoria Square was what everyone wanted,” says Paul Sargent, managing director of Multi Development UK. Issues with the ground, which Sargent describes as trying to build on liquid, meant that Victoria Square’s opening was moved from Christmas 2006 to last month. This remains Sargent’s main regret about the scheme, although it was unavoidable.
Sargent says that despite there being a few hoardings still up in the centre, it is 93% let, though only 65% are open and trading. He admits that he would have liked it to be more, and concedes that letting “hasn’t been easy, because Belfast is probably a bit further down the list” of retailers’ requirements.
Going by the figures supplied by Sargent, a few hoardings do not seem to have deterred the public. Footfall for the first four days of trading was 250,000 people.
Neither is Sargent worried about opening a scheme in the middle of the credit crunch. “I think Belfast is in its own micro-climate, and the city is having a growth period of its own,” he says, “so we are not noticing any concerns.”
It is too early to say what effect the newly opened scheme will have on the city’s main shopping area of Donegall Place, home to the likes of Marks & Spencer, and on Castle Court. Some commentators have expressed fears that there is now too much retail space in the city.
There are, though, still four major developments either under construction or planned: William Ewart Properties, ING Estates and Snoddons Construction’s £360m Royal Exchange the North East Quarter an extension to Castle Court and the much-maligned, also Westfield-owned, out-of-town retail park Sprucefield, which for years has fought to add a 460,000 sq ft extension to its existing 220,000 sq ft.
Sprucefield, 12 miles from Belfast city centre, already has a 123,000 sq ft M&S. But it is the planned extension – with its anchor store and 29 additional shops, which has been on the cards for the past five years – that is the bane of Belfast retailers.
This disquiet is set to continue as Westfield, which has seen its application approved and overturned several times, is preparing to submit yet another application this month.
Proposed anchor John Lewis is spurning the city centre and is insistent that it will only come to the province if it can open at Sprucefield, which is located on the intersection of the M1 and the A1, Northern Ireland’s only motorways. Belfast retailers believe this move would work against the ongoing regeneration of the city centre.
While Sargent sticks to his belief that John Lewis should be in Belfast, he is more relaxed about the situation because “now we are open and we got the reaction we wanted from the general public”.
