Helen Pearce reports from Monte Carlo on the annual International Council for Shopping Centres’ European conference, which took as its theme The Human Face of Shopping.
As British developers rush to get mega-shopping schemes off the ground and “retail parks” proliferate, a timely warning was issued by Hillier Parker’s Harold Couch to the 300-strong British contingent and the overseas delegates at last week’s ICSC conference.
With over 36 developments of over 500,000 sq ft currently proposed within the UK, Mr Couch believes that there is only room for 10 or maybe 12 of these between now and the end of the century.
“Hopefully there will soon be some rationalisation to the enormous number of applications for fairly speculative out-of-town developments”, he added. Despite Mr Couch’s hopes, positive action by the Government is yet to be forthcoming.
And while developers are rushing to develop, are they paying enough attention to what the shopper wants: more pleasant landscaped links from car park to shopping centre for example, or the desire for leisure elements? There are signs that this trend of concern — treating the shopper as human rather than just a consumer — has a long way to go.
Inevitably the bottom line which emerged from a diverse programme of speakers was that a happy shopper will stay longer in a centre and therefore spend more.
As Gerard Taieb, president of Larry Smith Consulting, succinctly put it: “If they only stop [in the centre] for a pee, the chances are they’ll buy something”.
Yet many developers still have to come to terms with this concept both within their own economic as well as aesthetic confinements.
Marks & Spencer’s Peter Spridell, one of the few retailers to speak — many delegates would have welcomed more — believes that “a more fundamental facet of shopping centre concepts needs to be addressed: that of scale.
“In simple terms, how large should shopping centres be — what is the optimum size? Half a million, one million or two million sq ft. What may make for good land use and construction economies for the developer may not produce a sympathetic and human shopping entity for the customer.”
Many such interesting questions were raised at the conference, but many of the delegates were left thinking that there were not enough answers.
Understandably, perhaps, many of the unpaid speakers took the opportunity to “plug” their firm’s work in front of several hundred potential clients, which took the form of a Cook’s tour around “schemes we have done” rather than using schemes to answer specific questions. Clearly, some speakers were not about to solve people’s problems for nothing.
The constraints of a strict timetable also restricted potentially illuminating questions and discussion — always the first item to suffer the guillotine at any conference. However, to be fair, round the table discussions during intervals went some way to redressing the balance.
Many of the questions raised, and the subject of the most animated discussions, touched on the incorporation of “people” or leisure elements into developments.
Steve Moorhead, a director of Forrec International Corporation of Toronto, responsible for West Edmonton Mall — the much vaunted example of combined shopping and leisure — asked these questions: How do you finance such a facility? Where is it best located within the shopping facility? Can the leisure itself be a profit centre? How do you deal with future flexibility and longevity of leisure elements? Is leisure a fad or a growing and vital part of the retailing formula? All pertinent questions which had many developers and agents scratching their heads.
Mr Moorhead’s conclusions were truncated through lack of time, but essentially he warned developers to stay “flexible”. The learning curve is still developing.
Speaking of mixed developments, Mr Moorhead concluded: “Leisure is a demonstrable growth market and if we can clearly determine the right mix, for profitability of the retail facilities and attention to the basic human needs of recreation and enjoyment, we can successfully and aesthetically combine them to achieve a situation where the total is greater than the sum of the parts.” “Therein lies the rub!,” as one agent wryly remarked.
