With more than half its population doing most of their shopping elsewhere, High Wycombe has a bad case of what retail consultants call “leakage”.
Part of the problem is the town’s image. It is not so much that it has a bad one as none at all.
Even its list of famous former residents is a little limited. Top of the pile is 1980s popster Howard Jones, who did not stay long and now lives in Maidenhead.
But High Wycombe’s lacklustre image may be about to change with the arrival of a swanky new shopping centre aimed unashamedly at the town’s affluent catchment area.
Next month, the district council is expected to grant planning permission for Stannifer’s planned 750,000 sq ft town-centre redevelopment, formerly known as Project Phoenix.
The name was dropped earlier this year after the council decided the use of the word phoenix was a little tired — rather like High Wycombe’s retail offering.
That is why Stannifer is now prepared to spend more than £1m on rebranding the development, which it is hoped will appeal to the ladies who lunch at Gerrard’s Cross and the deep-pocketed consumers living in and around the town.
But both the council and Stannifer agree that the delivery of a major shopping centre development may not in itself change the town’s retailing fortunes.
For what High Wycombe really needs is an image makeover to complement the estimated £400m of retail-led development that the town will see over the next three years.
“We are appointing consultants to launch an awareness campaign about all the changes that are happening in the town and the shopping centre,” says Charles Brocklehurst, head of property services at Wycombe district council
. “We want to get the message across that High Wycombe isn’t just John Lewis at junction 4 of the M40.”Radical changes
But for affluent shoppers, it seems it is — or at least, that is what the department store’s car park suggests.
“If you look at John Lewis on a Saturday afternoon, it is indicative of our catchment. The car park is full of BMWs and Range Rovers,” says Brocklehurst, who recently returned to live and work in High Wycombe after some time away.
“There was a feeling that nothing much had happened here,” he says, contrasting that mood with the current enthusiasm for making radical changes in the town centre.
In fact, plans to improve the town’sshopping centre date back to 1988, when the development of Octagon phase II was first mooted.
Since then, there have been a succession of delays and false dawns, during which time High Wycombe has slid steadily down the national league table of shopping centres.
To tempt back the As and Bs of the consumer hierarchy, Stannifer is also in the process of selecting a brand consultant, for which it is considering spending up to £500,000 pabetween now and completion.
That is no mean sum for a scheme that is worth about £140m.
But even without a catchy new name, the project formerly known as Phoenix is already attracting strong interest from retailers.In fact, interest has been so high that Stannifer lodged a revised application in May, which included an extra 120,000 sq ft of retail as well as a second anchor tenant, in addition to House of Fraser, which has already signed up.
The developer is now six months ahead of schedule on its prelet targets.
“We have been actively letting the scheme for the past six months, and we’ve really been overwhelmed by the level of demand,” says Alan Peach, Stannifer’s development director.
“In four of the largest units, we are in a situation where we have two retailers chasing each of them.
“We had a choice of House of Fraser and Debenhams for the first anchor, and we ended up in a best-bid situation. The same is happening with the second anchor, where we also have two retailers interested.”
He adds: “Retailers recognise that the town has a very affluent catchment area, and now they are in a position to test it.”
The new planning application hassubstituted much of the leisure element of the original scheme with more retail.
A proposed bingo hall has also been axed from the project, as it does not sit well with the image of affluence that the centre is hoping to project.
Stannifer has appointed Benoy, the architect behind Birmingham’s Bullring and Bluewater in Kent, in a bid to add polish to the original designs. These had attracted some criticism for their “wallpaper feel”.
With strong commitments from retailers, an expanded scheme, new architects and soon-to-be appointed brand consultant, Stannifer and Wycombe council have pulled out all the stops to ensure that the shopping centre will be a success when it opens in 2007.
If the Range Rovers and BMWs parked off junction 4 venture further into the town centre, then the millions now being invested in High Wycombe’s new image could turn out to be money well spent after all.
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Proposals boost town’s change of character |
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Snowdome |
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The dry ski-slope (known as Wycombe Summit) has been acquired by Snowdome of Tamworth, which proposes to develop the UK’s first enclosed ski slope at the site. |
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Rail improvement |
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Under its franchise agreement, Chiltern Rail is committed to a £6m revamp of the station. Plans include a multistorey car park, new ticketing hall and bridge link between the platforms. A new station forecourt is also planned. |
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Sainsbury’s expansion |
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The Sainsbury’s store on Oxford Road is linked to the council-owned Dovecot multistorey car park. Sainsbury’s plans to relocate a new store on the Oxford Road frontage, most of which the retailer has acquired. |
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New sports centre |
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The council is committed to replacing the existing sports centre adjacent to junction 4 on the M40 (Handy Cross). The preferred location is the Cressex Island site, opposite the UCI filmworks multi-screen cinema. The £30m development, with a 2007 target completion, will add critical mass to the out-of-town leisure area, which includes the popular John Lewis store. |
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New university campus |
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Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College has acquired the 15-acre former Compair site on Hughenden Valley, immediately to the north of the town centre. It plans to create a campus, aiming for up to 6,000 students on site. The proposals are intended to be cross-financed by Tesco’s proposed redevelopment of the BCUC site. |
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Retail park |
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The £50m Wycombe Retail Park opened this month. The first phase of the development includes 100,000 sq ft of retail with prelets to Wickes (28,000 sq ft), Comet (20,000 sq ft) and Pizza Hut (3,400 sq ft). |
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Regional developments |
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Banbury |
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Stockdale-Cala, the joint venture between Birmingham-based Cala Properties and Stockdale, has sold the freehold of the 85,000 sq ft Cherwell Centre in Banbury to Standplan Properties for more than £12m. |
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High Wycombe |
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Kennet Properties, the property subsidiary of RWE Thames Water, has completed a £50m, 100,000 sq ft retail park in High Wycombe. It is part of a mixed-use scheme to redevelop a former sewage works and paper mill site. |
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Witney |
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The Woolgate Shopping Centre has signed up three tenants: Costa Coffee, Game and Rapture. |
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The deals cover around 4,500 sq ft of space. The 72,500 sq ft scheme is owned by Universities Superannuation Scheme and is anchored by Waitrose. |
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Bicester |
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Cherwell council plans to appoint a development partner for a six-acre site behind the town’s Crown Walk Shopping Centre. Plans for the site include a multiscreen cinema, library and supermarket. |
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Kidlington |
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Plans for the redevelopment of the former market site on Kidlington High Street have been approved. The scheme will include 22 flats with retail on the ground floor. Developer Minns Estates aims to complete the project by summer 2005. |
