The £150m makeover of Nottingham’s Broadmarsh shopping centre is one step closer. Earlier this month, owner intu submitted a planning application which opens the way for a start on site in early 2016.
Yet when the plan was first revealed in February it received a lukewarm reception from some observers, and sighs from others, who despaired of action to reclaim the ageing hulk of the 470,000 sq ft Broadmarsh centre.
Tim Garratt, managing director at surveyor Innes England, has led the slow hand-clap. After 12 years of false dawns since Westfield revealed plans for a 1.3m sq ft rebuild, Garratt’s confidence in the revamp of the 45-year-old mall is low.
“The credibility meter is barely at zero,” he says. “There is huge cynicism in the city. We have seen so many plans and target start dates, it prompts groans. The city just wants to see something happen.
“The latest proposal is very average, but then the starting point is so low, and the Broadmarsh so terrible, you think you ought to be glad. The latest scheme is hardly inspirational, but it is better than the awful thing we have today. The intu plan is a huge sticking plaster – and a beige one – because it is putting its money into the Victoria Centre instead.
Garratt adds: “Intu’s Broadmarsh scheme has to wash its face, but intu is improving the value of the Victoria by restraining values at Broadmarsh, which it has been filling with discounters, so there is no longer any reason to walk through it unless it is in your way.”
Garratt believes slow progress at Broadmarsh leaves Nottingham city council with a problem. “The council owns the freehold and it is taking a financial hit because shops are empty. But the council has no cards to play. Intu will do what it wants when it wants,” he says.
“I have always taken the view that intu is not a long-term owner of the Broadmarsh. You bolster the Victoria – get Apple and Hollister to sign up so it becomes the place to go – and eventually you up the value of the Victoria Centre to the extent that Broadmarsh is irrelevant, and then you get rid of it. But in the interim Broadmarsh is dying on its feet. In the long-run intu will not own Broadmarsh, and I will go shopping at the Victoria.”
Intu insists it is not playing for time, or running down Broadmarsh, and that it has no plans to sell. “No change of ownership is envisaged,” it insists.
Intu says that far from dragging its feet, it is already talking to cinema operators “with the hope of signing one during these early stages”. In the meantime, intu is not publishing rental figures for Broadmarsh, but it is a safe guess that rents are far below the £230 per sq ft zone A reported at the Victoria Centre.
Martin Breeden, regional director at intu, says that the public reaction to the plan is far from lukewarm. “We had a 90% response in favour during consultation. They want what we are offering. By buying Broadmarsh we unlocked the stalemate in the city’s retail sector. Victoria was always the city’s prime pitch. Now we want to get some leases signed at Broadmarsh,” he says.
“It is not a sticking-plaster. We have come up with something that balances out the city nicely, something that is going to work in harmony with the retail spine of Bridlesmith Gate, linking the north and south of the city.”
Nottingham council says it has no worries that the Broadmarsh is being put on the back burner to bolster the prospects of the Victoria Centre.
The council’s corporate director for development and growth, David Bishop, says: “We have no doubts over intu’s intentions for intu Broadmarsh. We have signed a conditional development agreement with the company which sets out arrangements for transforming Nottingham’s retail offer, first with improvements to intu Victoria, then the development of intu Broadmarsh. We have received a planning application for intu Broadmarsh, which shows intu is doing what it said it would do in partnership with us.
“We are confident we are now closer than we have been for many years to realising the ambition to transform intu Broadmarsh into an exciting retail and leisure destination.”
Nottingham council and intu signed a conditional development agreement for intu Broadmarsh in January 2014. However, when asked, the council preferred not to go into detail on the agreement, or talk about whether intu was obliged to proceed speculatively with the refurbishment.
It is hard to find anyone in Nottingham who isn’t pleased to see action – any action – at the Broadmarsh centre. But many will withhold their final resounding applause until they can walk through the centre’s newly located doors.
The Broadmarsh plan
The overall size of intu Broadmarsh will not be increased, but there will be a better mix of retail, catering and leisure, says intu. The proportion of leisure space will grow from around 3% to about 25%, thanks largely to a new six-screen cinema. Once work is completed, there will be 345,000 sq ft of shops, of which 40,000 sq ft will be in the Bridlesmith Gate/ Drury Walk area of the centre.
The plan includes a new southern gateway from Nottingham train station with improved pedestrian routes, plus a new, open entrance off Middle Pavement and another from Lister Gate to Collin Street and the station.
Subject to planning consent, work could start on site in the first half of 2016 for completion by the end of 2018. These proposals form part of a £150m investment by intu and Nottingham council in the Broadmarsh area, which includes the refurbishment of the car park and bus station, along with improvements to the public realm.
Broadmarsh is two-thirds owned by intu and one-third owned by Nottingham city council, which also owns the freehold of the land.
Victoria Centre
The £40m remodelling and refurbishment of the intu Victoria Centre in Nottingham is already under way. A 19,700 sq ft flagship River Island store follows lettings to Urban Outfitters, Superdry and Office. Planning permission for a wider development and extension of the intu Victoria Centre was granted in July 2014, extending it north by up to another 500,000 sq ft.
