Two major redevelopments will radically strengthen the hand of Cardiff’s retail scene, which has struggled to meet growing demand – especially from large occupiers. Leisure, meanwhile, is on a roll. By Noella Pio Kivlehan
Peter Cleary is a man on a mission. Brandishing last September’s Cardiff feature in EG, which highlighted the lack of retail space in the city, Land Securities’ development director expounds on his plan to save the city from its retail woes.
The saviour is to be the 750,000 sq ft (69,700m2) extension to the 350,000 sq ftSt David’s Shopping Centre. If the National Assembly for Wales approves the plan, it will transform half the Welsh capital’s retail offer. The scheme will, says Cleary, “bring together Cardiff’s fragmented retail offer”.
The LandSec scheme, being developed with Capital Shopping Centres, is one of two major retail projects planned for the city.
The other is Scottish Widows’ redevelopment of 129,000 sq ft (11,980m2) on Queen Street to create larger units, which has been granted planning permission and will start development later this year.
Other good news on the Cardiff retail front involves Next, which is taking the 75,000 sq ft (6,970m2) former Marks & Spencer store on Queen Street, and Ikea, which last month signed the lease for the former British Gas site in Ferry Street – a move described by King Sturge’s Gareth Williams as “fantastic”.
If last year’s Colliers CRE In-Town retail report 2001 is anything to go by, these latest developments come just in time for Cardiff. According to the report, prime retail rents had fallen by 8.3% in 12 months to May 2001 to £220 per sq ft.
And in December, South Wales’s own paper, the Western Mail, ran a story admitting the city was losing shoppers to Dublin.
Williams, however, considers the Colliers CRE report unfair. He says that the city is merely waiting for the big proposed schemes to come on line.
Experian’s Annual retail ranking report, issued earlier this month, backs up Williams’s positive sentiment. It shows cause for renewed optimism about Cardiff’s retail offer, which has moved up from eighth to sixth place in the national rankings.
Nobody disputes that Cardiff needs an injection of retail floorspace, and most agents welcome the planned St David’s extension. However, the sheer size of the scheme leads some to urge LandSec to proceed with caution.
“LandSec has a responsibility to do the scheme correctly. Being such an ambitious project, it has got to be designed very well,” says Williams.
LandSec’s Cleary is adamant that the St David’s extension – which, subject to planning, should start on site in 2005 and reach completion two or three years later – will be handled with care
He sees the project as “an opportunity to create an interchange between the old Cardiff and the new Cardiff”.
Says Cleary: “Our plan is to connect up with the Arcades and Queen Street,” adding that he also hopes to create links with St David’s Hall, CIG Cinema and Cardiff International Arena.
Cleary likens the proposed development to Dublin’s retail offer and to the leisure scene of Barcelona’s Las Ramblas.
“We see it as retail-led, mixed-use, urban regeneration,” he says.
The extension’s retail element will comprise 10 shops of 10,000-15,000 sq ft and a few others of 20,000-30,000 sq ft, anchored by a four-storey, 250,000 sq ft department store.
Selfridges, which is known to be seeking space in Cardiff, is strongly tipped as the anchor store. “I would be very surprisedif LandSec wasn’t talking to Selfridges,”says Williams.
Whatever the new tenants in St David’s, such a large-scale expansion could clearly be detrimental to the rest of the city’s retail offer – particularly Cardiff’s traditional retail areas of St Mary’s Street and Queen Street.
However, Cleary says this will not happen because the plan is to add to the existing retail offer rather than take away from it.
Helping to ensure this, Queen Street is undergoing a major facelift of its own. Scottish Widows’ 129,000 sq ft (11,980m2) scheme stretches from 55 to 77 Queen Street and will, as GVA Grimley’s Andrew Lee points out, give the city some much-needed large units.
The redevelopment will take in several shops and a former cinema to create five or six big units with ground-floor andfirst-floor space.
With so much planned on the retail scene, Cardiff can surely expect a further move up the UK retail rankings before long.
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South Wales retail round-up |
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Retail is on the move across much of the region |
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” Swansea’s retail market had a resurgence of activity last year, producing a move up one place to 54th in Experian’s Annual retail ranking report ” The proposed Castle Quays shopping centre is moving ahead, while Centros Miller is submitting a planning application for 403,660 sq ft of space. Its £125m centre, anchored by a 100,000 sq ft department store, is due to open in 2006 ” awg Developments is considering whether to redevelop or refurbish the 16,150 sq ft St David’s Centre ” In the centre of Neath, the much-publicised Gwyn Walk Shopping Centre has fallen through and the town remains the last large South Wales town without a shopping centre or proposals to develop one ” In Port Talbot, Charterhouse Shopping Centre Fund is to reconfigure the Aberfan Centre to provide larger units by relocating the covered market hall ” The requirements of a number of occupiers for large units in Carmarthen remain unsatisfied. Following a rapid rise in prime rents over the past two years, rental growth is stabilising ” In Blackwood, work on a £20m retail centre by CR Chelverton Properties – which comprises Carillion Developments, Richardson Developments and Chelverton – is under way |
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Source: King Sturge/Hartnell Taylor Cook |
Sports village
Experience water, ice and snow
It has been a long time in the planning – about five years – but proposals for Cardiff county council’s £700m International Sports Village development were finally launched last month, promising a “water, ice and snow” experience.
The village is aimed to be all things to all people. As well as containing a residential element, it will include pubs, restaurants, hotels, fast-food outlets, casinos, 100,000 sq ft of food retail, a golf driving range and an arena.
The snow-themed scheme will also feature an aquatic centre with a 50m swimming pool, a leisure ice-pad capable of holding formal ice hockey matches, and a snow dome with up to five ski runs.
The pubs and restaurants already have outline planning permission, and the remainder of the scheme has just been submitted to the council.
The reason for the snow theme is simple. “It’s exciting and it attracts people,” says Cardiff council’s special projects manager Pat Thompson.
Thompson is obviously brimming with enthusiasm for the scheme, which he says will attract people not only from across Wales but also Birmingham and Bristol.
He is also looking to win customers from overseas – as far afield as Japan, South Africa and the US, but principally Europe.
How the development will sit with Cardiff’s existing retail and leisure offer remains to be seen, but Thompson stresses that the sports village offers a different type of retail and leisure experience from the city centre.
“It’s not in any way competitive to the city centre. We are totally satisfied that it’s what the council wants. On the leisure side, we are offering destination leisure, not just for Cardiff but for leisure breaks,” he says.
Cardiff’s leisure market has grown significantly in recent years.
The opening of Millennium Plaza at the Millennium Stadium last year added a plethora of names to the city’s leisure scene, which is focused around St Mary’s Street.
Jongleurs Comedy Club, Jumpin Jaks, Bar Risa and Surfers Walkabout were among those taking space. La Tasca and Hogshead will join the growing band of leisure operators in Cardiff some time in the next 12 months, when the mixed-use Old Brewery Quarter – the former SA Brain brewery – is completed.
Some worry that the city’s leisure market could reach saturation point, but Phillip Morris of EJ Hales says: “The reality is that each pub seems to exceed targets, and other operators that monitor these figures become keener themselves on taking representation in Cardiff.”
The Millennium Stadium will continue to be a major draw for the city. “There’s no doubt the stadium has been good for the city,” says Chesterton’s Jonathan Davies. “It’s given Cardiff a landmark sports centre, and the leisure operators do very well from it.”
