The UK’s second city has in the past been embarrassed by its poor retail and leisure offer, but Birmingham is now heading upmarket in a big way. Amanda Sutton reports
Birmingham’s kids are a trendy bunch. Designer children’s wear store Bratz has just opened in the renamed Pavilion Central – formerly Pavilions shopping centre – where tiny trendsetters can find anything from DKNY to Tommy Hilfiger.
It is not just youngsters that are catered for. Birmingham’s retail and leisure offer is significantly more upmarket than five years ago, and is now aiming to pull in the high-earners from Brindleyplace and from the city’s financial core.
This has moved the city into a better position to compete with retail rivals Manchester and London and means that the retail and leisure offer will finally match the city’s high-class office developments.
The Mailbox, Birmingham’s classy new retail and leisure development, has already attracted Harvey Nichols, Emporio Armani and DKNY. Martineau Place and Martineau Galleries will follow, providing space for the likes of Gap and Benetton.
The new developments should ensure that there are enough large units to satisfy occupier demand. This should prevent any repeat of the situation 18 months ago, when John Lewis went to Touchwood Court in Solihull because there was nowhere to accommodate it in Birmingham.
Selfridges is opening its third store in the new, 110,000m2 (1.2m sq ft) Bull Ring, which is scheduled for completion in autumn 2003. The demolition and rebuilding of the 1970s shopping centre is symbolic of the transformation that the city is undergoing in an attempt to break free of its outdated image.
“The Bull Ring has been used by others to knock us, to say we have not changed. Now we have turned a corner,” says Richard Green of Birmingham city council’s Eastside regeneration team. He admits: “We have not had the right environment for high-quality retailers in the past.”
Green heads the team that is putting together the site at Eastside and Masshouse Circus, which will be the next big city-centre location to be overhauled after the Bull Ring.
The huge amount of development planned for the city is partly why three developers have united to form the Birmingham Alliance. Hammerson, Land Securities and Henderson between them control much of the city centre, so, rather than going head-to-head over sites, it makes sense for them to come together and take advantage of their combined buying power.
Land assembly approach replicated
Simon Wallis of Hammerson says: “Birmingham is setting the model of unlocking the problems of putting land together in the city core.” The three developers and CGNU are implementing a similar approach in Bristol.
The redevelopment of Birmingham’s city centre is on a mind-boggling scale, but the property fraternity agrees that it is overdue. Tim Webb of law firm Eversheds says that only half of the Midlands’ retail outgoings is being spent in Birmingham and, although it is the UK’s second city, Leeds and Glasgow both have twice the amount of retail floorspace.
NAI Gooch Webster’s Richard Bidwell says: “We were so massively under-shopped, but the demand has always been there. Birmingham needed a development plan.”
Ian Hughes at the city’s King Sturge says: “We are playing catch-up. When Gap was looking for units out of London, it had to ask itself ‘Should we go to Birmingham?’ This should have been a no-brainer – it should have automatically been looking, and asking where to go, rather than if.”
The reason behind Gap’s hesitation about going to Birmingham is the one thing that everyone in the city’s property market hates talking about – image. For the highly image-conscious fashion retailers selling a lifestyle, image is everything.
In the past, Birmingham has not had the right product to entice these discerning retailers, but the new retail developments under way have already begun to attract them. Gap plans to open stores in both Martineau Place and the Bull Ring.
Between the Martineau developments and the Bull Ring lies Pavilion Central shopping centre. The centre, which is undergoing a major refurbishment, could not be better placed to benefit from Birmingham’s desire to go upmarket.
Refurbishment work is set to be completed at the end of 2002, and includes the creation of larger units, updating the interior, and improving the front and rear entrances to exploit a new transport interchange opposite Moor Street station behind the centre.
Martin Fleishman of Consultancy International, retail consultant to Pavilion Central owner Royal & SunAlliance, is not worried by the arrival of so much new retail space in Birmingham.
“Some retailers cannot afford the Bull Ring and are not at the level of Mailbox,” he says. “We are well placed to take advantage and should be complementary to each other as well as competitive.”
GVA Grimley’s Roger Ahmed says: “Birmingham is shouting itself about and, slowly but surely, building itself up. Operators are starting to think ‘Can we afford to miss out?’”
Lee Richardson of Richardson Developments has first-hand experience of this. “Hard Rock Caf
