Liverpool One comes of age

In spite of a recession and the near collapse of the financial system as we know it, shopping centres have kept opening over the last couple of years. Think, for example, of Bristol’s Cabot Circus or perhaps Union Square in Aberdeen, and of course there’s always Westfield London, among a number of others.

Taken as a whole, it’s still hard not to wonder why these grand schemes keep appearing out of the ground in the face of economic adversity, although many of them were planned prior to the onset of turbulent times. Yet they have done so and the newly opened One New Change and the forthcoming Westfield mall in Stratford bear witness to the fact that the tendency continues, albeit at a rather more modest pace than in the middle years of the last decade.

Perhaps the major point that frequently gets lost in this swirling retail developmental maelstrom is what happens when the builders have gone and the press have moved on to the next

big thing. It’s at this juncture that a shopping centre has to do that which it was set up to do: sell, sell, sell and prove its worth to the retailers that have taken leases.

Two years since it opened, Liverpool One has reached and, arguably, moved beyond this make-or-break stage and can reasonably be considered a fully fledged part of the retail panorama. Yet in the interval between phase one of the opening, two years ago, and November 2010, much has changed in the scheme, not least the number of new stores that have opened as well as the remodelling of units that have been in place since the off.

Miles Dunnett, head of asset management at the Liverpool fund, the body set up by Liverpool One developer Grosvenor to oversee the scheme, says that there has been an active process of tenant selection for the new stores that have opened during the period. He says: “Unless you can give them reasons to keep coming back, then they won’t. 20 new stores have opened over the last 12 months and we have about 10% more retail space than a year ago.” He adds that “still” more than 50% of the retailers found in Liverpool One were not present in the city prior to the opening of the development.

He also points out that “retailers need their adjacencies” and that tenant mix remains to the fore when considering which unit will be leased to which retailer. “You don’t come here to come to Argos because there are Argos stores everywhere,” as he puts it.

So where does this leave Liverpool One in terms of new and remodelled spaces and is the city a better place for their addition?

Waterstone’s

One of the more imaginative and engaging stores is also one of its larger ones: Waterstone’s. This has actually been open since just after Liverpool One first opened, but much has altered during its brief existence. It is also fair to say that this shop leaves its rival northwestern branch in Manchester’s Arndale Centre in the dust, although the latter was considered ground-breaking for the chain when it welcomed its first shoppers.

In Liverpool One the two-floor store divides easily between popular reading and a Paperchase concession on the ground floor and a large and asymmetric first floor that houses the rest of the offer. It is the point of sale that marks this store out from a run-of-the-mill Waterstone’s.

Store manager Andrew Campbell has personalised the offer with a strip running around the ground floor perimeter above the bestsellers with messages such as ‘Kids crimbo must haves’, ‘Prezzies for him’, ‘Tales your nan would tell’, and the eye-catching ‘Scousers dun good’ (for which, it appears, read Paul O’Grady and Kenny Dalglish). It’s straightforward stuff and an entirely local initiative. Upstairs, the Illy cafe with its slick Italian fixtures and the reading area with outsize Anglepoise lights are both features that are worthy of comment, as is the kid’s books area with its mural depicting Liverpool scenes.

Dune

This new store from the mid-market shoe retailer uses one of Andy Wahol’s bon mots as the central message of its window display: “You can never have too many shoes”, accompanied by a series of Warholesque prints of a boot.

Within, Dune has pulled out the design stops with a triple-tiered light fixture that demands to be viewed and whose circular shape informs the rest of the shop as far as layout and fixturing are concerned. This is particularly surprising when the square nature of the unit that the retailer has taken is considered. Located in the luxury end of Liverpool One, this store is one of several that have opened in a part of the development that was, with a couple of exceptions, virtually empty when the scheme first opened.

Reiss

Next door, the newly opened Reiss store has all the metropolitan glamour that you’d expect. With a bold logo on the shopfront, the interior features a floating louvred raft that serves to bring the eye down from what is a very high ceiling.

Monochrome graphics attached to the pillar and minimalist mid-shop equipment serve to set expectations about the price levels that will be encountered: this will not be a value offer. And the stark white of the logo and the front half of the shop is offset by a vampish red towards the rear.

The other thing about this interior is the manner in which the headless mannequins are casually posed in normal and highly abnormal positions around the store, with one even perched at raft level towards the back of the shop.

Christmas… by bents

There can be hardly a single shopping development in the UK currently that does not have a temporary or pop-up shop - helping the landlord to maintain the semblance of being fully let. In Liverpool One, this takes the form of ‘Christmas…by bents’, which must be one of the most high-profile locations for a temporary store in the country.

This is a large unit and, as the name might suggest, sells “everything to do with Christmas”, as Dunnett puts it. Practically, this means an installation just inside the entrance featuring German Christmas nutcracker-style figures and the inevitable Christmas tree. Nothing wrong with this if it’s done well and allowing for its prominent position, you have to suppose that this store will do well in the run-up to December 25. The only question is what happens to the space beyond that date?

Hed Kandi

This is the second Hed Kandi store in the UK: the first was opened in Bluewater earlier in the autumn. This branch is substantially bigger and its prime mood-setting feature is a recess in the ceiling into which multiple disco glitter balls have been inserted.

It’s cheap, it’s trashy and it’s probably entirely appropriate for a city where the club and pub scene remains vibrant. This is hedonistic partywear and nothing else and the store design perfectly reflects the merchandise that is on display. Also noteworthy are the suspended mid-shop rails, which hang from bright pink ropes attached to the ceiling.