Design with an edge

Way back when, retail parks were shiny, happy places to be. You could access them with ease and when you got there, by car, you could park for free more or less directly outside whichever shop you fancied. They also offered choice, albeit from within large sheds that boasted outsize logos and cavernous interiors. And the retailers that frequented these locations did very well.

Most of this was back in the last century and it is fair to say that the zenith of this form of retailing was probably in the late 1990s. That period coincided with the point at which many of them were built and, from the end of the 1980s though to the turn of the millennium, retail parks seemed a positive alternative to ailing UK high streets.

But things have changed and as we approach the end of the first decade of the new century, the balance of power between high streets and out-of-town locations has shifted. The UK’s towns and cities have cleaned up their acts, pedestrianised their high streets and made shopping once more the smart thing to do. All of which had left retail parks looking a little tired and shoppers wondering whether the free parking is still worth it when the appeal of central locations is so manifest.

Steve Collis, joint managing director at consultancy JHP Design, says: “Retail parks were all due for an upgrade and, to make matters more difficult for retailers in these locations, the big-box operators [he cites Tesco as an obvious example] have been offering more and more.” Another reason for visiting retail parks – choice – has therefore been put under pressure as some shoppers have headed for everything-under-one-roof retail propositions in preference to driving to the nearest collection of sheds.

Not everything has been one way, however, and park retailers and landlords have been fighting back. In the main, this has taken the form of better-looking store design, provided by retailers, and improvements to the overall environments of out-of-town locations.

But there is a catch. Adam Rawls, managing director of design consultancy Rawls & Co – which has acted as the design and style prefect for Land Securities’ Whitefriars development in Canterbury and, more recently, the Bristol Alliance’s Cabot Circus, which opened last week – says: “There’s still a reluctance to spend a lot of money on big boxes. The problem with big boxes is that they are huge spaces. So there are huge amounts of plasterboard, graphics and so on and that becomes expensive. What they tend to do now is to spend the money on shopfronts and the first interior part of a shop.”

This still sounds as if it could prove costly when the scale of a retail shed is considered. Rawls comments: “Traditionally, shopfronts would have been provided by the landlord, but now the landlords are asking the retailers to do it. They are providing a contribution, subject to the store not being just a big shop with very large letters.”

Land Securities portfolio director Nick Duffield is clear about the change. “Even allowing for planning, nobody would build a tin shed with a crinkly roof and large letters now. It’s also true that there has been an improvement in the quality of the signage. In many respects this has been led by the retailers.” It has. Walk around a retail park with open A1 planning consent today and the huge, in-your-face signs that used to demarcate this form of retailing are still there, but they are treated with a deal more subtlety than previously.

Cushman & Wakefield head of out-of-town retail Martin Supple points out it has not been just a case of retailers perceiving that they needed to raise their game. “To an extent they’ve been pushing against an open door [with regard to landlords]. I think it’s been an active relationship.” He notes that even the electronics retailers, for long the kings of the grotesquely large logo, have moved away from what he calls “a dead front”.

But where does this leave the retailer and has the fight-back to ensure customers keep shopping at edge locations been successful? The lessons of HomeSense and Ilva are instructive. HomeSense represents novelty for edge-of-town retailing. The problem is that it is typical of the kind of format found generally on parks with open A1 consent and, as Supple remarks: “Open A1 shopping parks still represent a relatively small fraction of the available space on retail parks.” Landlords and retailers still have a way to go to counter the high street threat that has become apparent over the past few years. Change, however, is on the way.