Estates Gazette Outstanding Contribution to Property Award
Sponsored by GVA
Winner: Westfield UK team
More than 100,000 people swarmed to Westfield’s new Stratford City shopping centre in east London in September to witness the opening of the 1.9m sq ft Olympic mega mall.
The opening was the crowning glory for the Australian developer, led in the UK by managing director Michael Gutman, chief operating officer Peter Miller, Stratford City development director John Burton and director of operations Bill Giouroukos.
Since its arrival in the UK back in 2000, Westfield has grown to become a byword for crowd-pulling retail which in turn attracts other tenants and investors.
Despite the continuing effects of the global economic downturn, 2011 has seen Westfield come up with even more ambitious expansion plans.
Last month, the company announced it had entered into exclusive arrangements with the freehold owner of the Whitgift shopping centre in Croydon, to explore the potential for a Westfield mall in south London.
If successful, the move would add another 1m sq ft to a portfolio that already includes Belfast, Derby, Guildford, Birmingham, Tunbridge Wells and Lisburn, Northern Ireland. It also includes the group’s Westfield London centre in White City, west London, which in 2010 attracted more than 26m people. Between them they spent more than £850m – 12% of all mall revenue in the UK.
In September, Westfield submitted a planning application for a £1bn redevelopment of 22 acres to the north of the shopping centre. In October, the group was also granted planning consent for a scaled-back version of its plans for Westfield Bradford.
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