The new John Lewis at Westfield London is ready for business. The 230,000 sq ft anchor to the shopping centre’s extension stands out like a shiny CGI against the backdrop of a building site, which is still filled with workers rushing to finish the remainder of the £600m project on time.
Some units, such as Lush and Molton Brown, already have their branding outside their shops. Others remain boarded up, offering no clues to which tenant they will eventually host.
Only a handful of retailers will be open on the “high street of flagships” come 20 March, which customers must walk down to reach John Lewis.
Given the current progress on the site, this street will still be largely empty come opening day. Of the 103 units available, 58 of these have exchanged. The remainder are either in solicitors’ hands or under offer.
A race against the clock
There are concerns the larger units could prove more of a challenge to get over the line and ready in time. Although most of the larger units are in legals, New Look will no longer be taking its unit on the first and mezzanine floors, which means there is now a 20,000 sq ft vacancy.
Westfield announced in a trading update in August last year that it would open the extension early after revealing its profits rose by 20% to £456m in the six months to 30 June. The rest of the shops and restaurants will all be opened in phases with the aim of all being up and running in time for Westfield London’s 10th birthday in October.
Despite the fact that a number of the units are still in negotiation, Westfield development director Duncan Bower stresses that the rationale behind the phased opening is strategic, and not due to a delay in finding in enough tenants.
He says: “John Lewis did not force any issue here at all. When we talked to them about opening they were supportive. We thought it would be far better to open the centre incrementally rather than going – boom – we’ve opened at Christmas and things go off the scale. There is a great danger that could be very difficult to manage.”
See the full Westfield tenant line-up here
Instead of potential chaos, like the opening of Westfield Phase 1 in 2008 which 10,000 people attended, it will be a “highly managed process over the next six months”, culminating with the birthday in October.
Is Bower concerned it will be a race against the clock? “Well, we are concerned about everything,” he says. “We will get there, yes we will. We are flooding the site with people and they are working all hours day and night. Doing too much at once impacts the customer and so that’s something we need to manage.”
“The world is a different place”
Bower first joined Westfield in 2005, so he will have overseen the development and completion of both Phase 1 and Phase 2. But a lot has changed in the retail market in 10 years.
“The world was a different place in 2007 when we first bought the land. It is a tough market, I think that consumer sentiment is something that ebbs and flows, there probably is a structural change going on in retail at the moment,” he says.
The surge in omni-channel retailing has prompted retailers to review the size of their estates and has analysts questioning whether or not there is too much retail space, and if shopping centres are too big.
Yet despite these significant changes in the retail market Bower believes that if you build the right product, then customers will come, regardless of how big it is.
He says: “We believed in the product then and we certainly believe in the product now. If you do the right thing, then people will want to come to shopping centres.
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