According to leading property firm, CBRE, two recent reports have highlighted that while development activity within the shopping centre sector remains at a recessionary low across the country, West Yorkshire’s cities are storming up the rankings with Leeds the principal mover on the national ‘Top Shopping Venues’ table.
CBRE’s UK Shopping Centre Pipeline report reveals that while shopping centre construction has slowed across the UK with proposals almost halving from 30m sq ft in 2009 to just 15.5m sq ft today, West Yorkshire is bucking the trend with schemes boosting the national development pipeline figures.
The report shows that over 50% of the 5.3m sq ft of shopping centre space nominally under construction in H1 2014 was accounted for by just four schemes with two of these located in West Yorkshire – Victoria Gate in Leeds and Bradford Broadway. The remaining schemes were Battersea Power Station and Kings Cross, London.
An additional report produced by Javelin Group in September showed that Yorkshire and Humberside is currently only 2.52 % behind London in terms of the amount under construction, mainly due to the opening of Trinity Shopping Centre in March 2013 which was the only scheme to have opened in the UK that year.
Andrew Milton, Director of Retail Asset Services at CBRE’s Leeds office comments;
“Hammerson’s Victoria Gate which will see John Lewis coming to the city for the first time, Westfield’s long awaited Broadway development in Bradford and the recently opened Vangarde Retail Park in York all demonstrate that retailing within the Yorkshire region continues to be strong in those important key locations.
“Although London and the south east remains dominant in terms of development and retailer preferences, strong retailing locations within the UK will always do well including good quality market towns. This is evidenced by Wykelands mixed use development in Beverley which is due to open late 2015.
“The relative importance of these developments can be seen in Javelin Groups annual ranking of retail venues published in September 2014, whilst London’s West End continues to be the leading shopping destination the principle mover at the top of the rankings is Leeds. Following the opening of Trinity it has moved up into third place behind Glasgow and Manchester and who is to say that Leeds will not rise higher when Victoria Gate opens?”
West Yorkshire’s shopping centres are a prominent feature in Javelin Group’s report which ranks York Designer Outlet as the third Top Factory Outlet Centre, Meadowhall comes in fifth place in the Top 20 Shopping Centres and Parkgate/Retail World in Rotherham also takes fifth place in the Top Retail Parks category.
Milton concludes that there is still room for additional mall development in the region;
“The role played by shopping centres in Leeds compared to the high street, their dominance, is only 52%. This suggests that in Leeds and in York (the latter ranked 20th and with a mall dominance of only 11%) additional mall development might indeed be possible in the future. This suggests that the region will continue to make an important contribution to the national shopping centre development pipeline”.
