In Focus: Twist in the retail
The news this week that Westfield is, in fact, going ahead with its planned £500m upgrade to the Broadmarsh shopping centre in Nottingham might have excited some, but to most people I’ve spoken to, it’s been met with a world-weary shrug.
Westfield, lest we forget, has been promising great things around the south end of the city centre for the best part of a decade now. This week’s news that the shopping centre giant has secured funding to start the redevelopment of the centre is, of course, welcome news for the city. However, we need to look at a decade of stagnation and ask why this was allowed to happen.
We also need to look at the lessons of other Westfield developments in the East Midlands. Whilst Westfield Derby was undoubtedly a coup for the city when it was announced and opened, some in the city grew concerned that it had split Derby’s retail offer in two.
In fairness to Westfield, it’s not proposing a huge grey elephant in the middle of Nottingham’s high street. The new proposals, which were unveiled at the end of last year, will see a series of blocks, to give the new development what Peter Miller, chief operation officer of Westfield in the UK is calling “more distinct and individual”.
Nottingham City Council is set to decide whether to give the plans the go-ahead in April, according to reports. It surely will, as the Broadmarsh has become an eye-sore. Anyone getting off the train at the station and trying to find the Old Market Square would think they’d stepped into a scene from a 1980s Romanian sitcom. The Broadmarsh is old, tired, dirty and full of the sort of budget shops that have kept it barely limping along, but was never going to attract retailers of any great quality.
It can only be hoped that the planning committee at Nottingham City Council don’t let this sorry saga drag on any longer. For as much as it has given the impression that it has held a position of power over Westfield during the last decade, it has also let the shopping centre operator get away with minimum investment on an important and much-populated gateway into the town.
Whether Harvey Nichols moves into the new Broadmarsh – as has been trailed for some time now - is something of a moot point in the short term. With the Southside area of Nottingham becoming ever more important to the economic future of the city, Westfield and the City Council really do need to make sure this redevelopment happens. Better to have a grey elephant in the middle of town than a knackered one, you might say.
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