EATING out and leisure facilities will be at the heart of the new £1.4billion Westfield & Hammerson shopping centre set to open in Croydon in 2019.
Business leaders from both companies were part of a four-strong panel discussing the vision for smart retail in the town centre at the Develop Croydon Conference 2017.
Myf Ryan, Chief Marketing Officer for Westfield in the UK and Europe, and Sophie Ross, Group Head of Multichannel at Hammerson spoke of their excitement that the plans had finally been given the green light by Croydon Council last week.
However, with the way retailers do their shopping expected to change rapidly over the next decade, the panel all agreed that there could hardly be a more difficult period to implement such a huge project.
“It’s incredibly exciting but also one of the most challenging times in retail,” said Andrew Phipps, Head of Retail Research UK and EMEA at CBRE.
“This should be and I’m sure it will be one of the most smart and innovative shopping centres of its kind. It should feel very different from a standard shopping centre. It has to be flexible and allow it to be a really fit for purpose.
“In 10 years’ time there will be a lot less traditional shopping done in stores. There will definitely still be shopping in shopping centres, people will always want to go out, have that experience, eat out, but what they may not want is to carry those bags around the shopping centre, so the stores role will change – almost like designer show rooms and the shopping could be delivered to them later.”
“What we need to do is understand what customers want, that’s really changing,” said Ross.
“People are moving towards a more experiential, leisure side of things, we must deliver on that and work on the tech to deliver a smart retail environment at the heart of Croydon.”
Ryan agreed. “At Westfield we do still believe there will be that need for a very big physical space but how that looks and how it’s used will be very different,” she said.
“I think there will be a bigger focus on flexibility and space. There is a massive push towards food and beverage and entertainment. We like that at Westfield because its more about connecting people and that is a platform that will always give us a huge point of difference to online retail.
“Now at Westfield London, 20 per cent is food and beverage, five years ago it was 10-12 per cent so it’s shifting quite dramatically. Where the changes will come is how flexible that space is.
“One thing we’ve done some work on is family and community. It strikes us, Croydon has is a big residential area and a need for a big cultural community space hub at the heart of it.”
“The key is flexibility,” echoed Ross. “We talk about driverless cars, well in five years’ time that may not have taken off but in ten years’ time it may well have really taken off so what are we going to do with that car park space?
“We have to make sure it’s built flexibly so it can be used for leisure or logistics – that’s absolutely what we are looking at at Hammerson.”