Retailer wants to expand Marble Arch branch
Jane Roberts
Marks & Spencer has considered expanding its top-performing store at Marble Arch in Oxford Street through an underground link to Selfridges.
Chris Williams, Marks & Spencer’s head of property, said the retailer had looked at options for revamping the Marble Arch store, at the western end of the capital’s most famous shopping thoroughfare. He said: “One option could be to link our basement food space to the new underground food hall that Selfridges is planning as part of its proposed redevelopment.”
Marks & Spencer would also like to increase the store’s ground-floor sales space by putting servicing underground, said Williams.
Selfridges finance director Peter Williams said: “There have been talks about our food hall and whether it could link with Marks & Spencer. But we need convincing that the benefits would outweigh the costs.”
Selfridges hopes to get planning consent for its existing scheme this summer.
Marks & Spencer and Selfridges are two of the five Oxford Street retailers who are on the 11-strong board of the New West End Company, the body set up last year to improve the retail offer and environment in Oxford Street, Bond Street and Regent Street. This week it emerged that the six landlords on the board, including Land Securities, Grosvenor, Prudential and Legal & General, all with extensive West End holdings, have floated the idea of pooling ownerships to manage their estates together, perhaps in limited partnerships.
Ian Henderson, chief executive of Land Securities, said: “One or two people have said would it not be sensible to manage them together in the long-term in this sort of way.
“It is one of a lot of questions we should be asking ourselves, like whether we should put service charge clauses in our leases. But it is miles down the track.”
The 11 board members have given £2m to kickstart the New West End Company. Its chief executive, Helen Robinson, said money would be used immediately to recruit directors of street management and marketing and to pay for consultants to produce a masterplan “looking at the bigger picture”.
