After a decade of innovation in UK retail development, the 1990s promises to be a period of experimentation as retail is adapted to the consumer’s changing needs. Denis Hall reports.
Recession is giving the debate on the future of retail an added urgency and already threatens the symbol of retail expansion in the 1980s — the out-of-town regional centre.
Until the country’s consumers are more confident, neither funds nor developers are going to put up the money required for this kind of development.
“The downturn in the economy means that it is unlikely you will see any more 5m-sq ft to 10m-sq ft megacentres being built within the next five years,” says Chartwell Land’s David Coleman.
John Abel, director at Thurrock Lakeside’s developer Capital & Counties believes that the prospects for large out-of-town development are numbered, regardless of recession.
“The planning climate is perhaps not as favourable to major out-of-town shopping centres as it has been in the past,” he says. “This reasoning is valid: centres the size of Lakeside need huge catchment areas and across the country there is probably only room for up to 12 such schemes. Planning authorities take the view that many of these opportunities are already accounted for.”
The main influence on future retail development will be legislation passed as a direct result of the many shop proposals submitted to local authorities during the boom years.
Developers kept going to appeal over refusals. As a result the Environment Secretary was frequently over-riding local plans. The councils felt that they were being by-passed and the DOE thought that it was being swamped.
The outcome was the Planning & Compensation Act 1991. Granted royal assent last August, the Act creates a planning system driven by development plans rather than the changing requirements of developers and land owners.
This shift has special significance for the retail sector, with the obligation now resting on the local authority to make provision for new forms of retailing as much as any other form of economic development within its area.
According to Hillier Parker’s Stuart Robinson, the Act forces councils to take on a role which “they are ill-suited to fulfil”. He says that: “Local councillors will be called upon to anticipate how their areas should meet new forms of retail development and make provisions for them”.
Robinson fears that this will not happen. “Local authorities do not have a good track record of trying to incorporate new forms of development into their own plans where it does not fit in cosily with the current fabric of urban development.” He recalls Alan Tate’s quip that if the development of superstores had been left to the local authorities then we probably would not have seen the introduction of that kind of development in the late 1970s.
Developers fear that a recent episode at Elmbridge in south-west London could be repeated across the country. When the local council’s negative stance on new superstore development was challenged at a local plan inquiry, the council admitted that it had not provided for new superstores in the local plan was because it did not understand them.
The ways in which this Act is interpreted will dictate where future shopping centres will go — other factors will dictate the shape and content of those centres.
As a result of the influence of the green movement there is a growing consumer reaction against the artificiality of enclosed fluorescent-lit centres in favour of more natural solutions.
“The 1980s was the decade of the yuppie and hi-tech solutions,” says Hillier Parker’s Peter Reddick. “But that generation is moving into middle age now: the 1990s consumer’s concerns are greener and less materialistic.”
For very different reasons, tenants and developers are also rethinking the merits of the open-plan centre. The creation of air-conditioned and covered shopping centres in the 1970s and 1980s resulted in high service charges. “In the boom years retailers could sustain them, but, like everybody else, they are now looking hard at their costs and service charges are top of the list,” says Reddick.
As a result, tenants, developers and consumers are looking with renewed enthusiasm at the once despised open-plan centres of the 1960s.
Tony Walker of Damond Lock Grabowski & Partners claims that the trend is now towards a design compromise which keeps all sides happy. “Up to about five years ago, any landlord looking to refurbish an open-plan centre would see a glass roof and air-conditioning as the obvious solutions. But now canopies and arcading are seen as the natural and cheaper answers — keeping the rain off but letting in the fresh air.”
Thie simpler approach also reflects a reaction against the complicated high-profile designs which characterised some shopping-centre design in the mid-1980s. Design was
Design was recognised then as a vital tool in helping retailers to differentiate for marketing purposes what were essentially the same products.
The preoccupation with new design ideas emerged from the reaction against the dark malls and brightly lit shop fronts which proved so unpopular in the 1970s.
“Developers began to feel that the design of a shopping centre had to stand out in its own right: the industry became confused between the role of design for product and shops as compared with that for shopping centres,” says Walker.
In all the euphoria the critical time factor was too often forgotten: “Design for a retail product has a lifespan of, at most, two years, while a shopping centre has to build up loyalty over perhaps 10 years,” says Walker. “Different principles apply: good shopping centres should not date rapidly, which is just what has happened to some centre designs across the country.”
Opinion in the sector now favours the role of shopping-centre design as a backdrop. Walker believes that centre design should function in the same way as buildings in a High Street. “Consumers register the shopfronts, not the architecture above them, and shopping centres have got to be as laid-back and unobtrusive. Ideally, when a consumer thinks of a shopping centre he will not think of the centre’s name but of the retailers trading there.”
Retailers want simple functional design — the supposedly contentious issue of traditional or innovative design is actually a marginal factor in their calculations.
“One of the main reasons for the dominance of vernacular design is the local planning authority, not the shopper,” says Coleman. “You’re far more likely to get a tile-hung building through a planning committee — especially if it’s out of town — rather than a Stansted Airport frame. The design question is an open one for retailers and retail developers.”
This point is demonstrated strikingly at Hedge End, by junction 7 of the M27 between Southampton and Portsmouth. In October last year, Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer started trading at their uncompromisingly “hi-tech” joint retail development, designed by Aukett. Surrounded by a landscaped woodland belt, the two stores are linked by a wide mall complete with restaurant. The building is wrapped in a colonnade, the upper part consisting of exposed structural steelwork, the lower section clad in white pre-cast concrete.
At the other end of the design spectrum stands Tesco’s new out-of-town supermarket at Dorchester in Dorset. Situated on land owned by the Prince of Wales’ Duchy of Cornwall, the building reflects the architectural traditions closest to the prince’s heart.
Designed by the Norman Hitchcock Partnership of Yeovil, the development is a reinterpretation of the highly serviced retail shed as village barn — on a gigantic scale.
Both schemes’ popularity suggests that the sector’s preoccupation with function and context rather than style is not misplaced.
The basic shopping-centre formula continues to meet the needs of the consumer; retail parks need more radical treatment to ensure their economic futures.
This issue has become pressing as the first of the schemes reach the end of their first decade in need of a facelift.
Reddick warns that redevelopment is as likely an option as refurbishment for some retail parks, “especially where the retail use still on the land could be used much more profitably by a new form of retail scheme”.
The bright and brash design which characterised what was then an exciting new form of shopping is now working against them.
“Many of these schemes have dated rapidly and their locations often mean that the redevelopment of a retail park offers you a much bigger return for a smaller investment than is possible on town-centre refurbishment,” says Walker.
The redevelopment trend is taking the retail park back to basics. At the centre of the new breed of hybrid retail parks are standard shed-style outlets with a mall of smaller units attached, and possibly a superstore.
First to explore new tenant mixes within the retail park formula with any success was Ladbroke City & County Land and Lynton’s One Stop centre at Perry Barr, Birmingham. Opened in 1990, it has attracted a lot of interest from developers keen to repeat the hybrid scheme’s success elsewhere.
The developers’ concern to present consumers with something different but familiar has been vindicated. The result is a large superstore anchoring a standard mall, closely integrated with large retail warehouses, that has proved very popular. Asda, Texas Homecare, Children’s World and Carpet Kingdom are all represented.
Multiple retailers like Stylo, Barratt, Birthdays, Adams, Tandy, Radio Rentals, Stead & Simpson, Rosebys, Allsports and Bakers Oven have been attracted to the mall.
Transport has emerged as a key factor in the future success of these schemes.
“In the past developers have tended to assume that cars would be the main form of transport to retail parks,” says Walker. “But our research suggests that public transport is now seen as vital to the success or failure of these schemes.”
The proximity of One Stop to a central transport interchange — the scheme is next to a bus terminus and a BR station — has been a major reason for the popularity of the centre.
Few of the lessons of this scheme have been lost on its would-be rivals: “The lead given by Ladbroke and Lynton at One Stop is probably foremost in the minds of developers looking at the future of retail parks,” says Coleman. “It anticipated many of the problems facing retail-park owners who were not so farsighted.”
One Stop serves as a symbol for today’s retail sector. After the grand visions of the 1980s, the 1990s are shaping up as a decade of cautious experimentation aimed at meeting the needs of a population whose shopping needs have turned out to be more modest than was once hoped.
