Reimagining retail

We partner with occupiers as part of our retail “Reframe” strategy. We take three areas of focus – “Gather”, “Street Market” and “Public” – and aim to prioritise experiences - like indoor street markets and transform vacant units and unused areas into leisure and lifestyle spaces. Our KINGLAND development in Poole, is a great example of this strategy in action….

In the first phase of the Poole programme, we offered retail units in the KINGLAND development to 10 independent Dorset-based businesses, freeing them of rent and business rates for two years and driving a creative and local focus. Poole’s Kingland Crescent had been recently revamped as part of our strategy to re-position its retail offering, which includes the adjacent Dolphin Shopping Centre.

We are now rolling out this approach in three other shopping centres across the UK: The Grosvenor in Northampton, Overgate in Dundee, and The Beacon in Eastbourne. Our goal is to follow this approach as part of our Future Retail Blueprint, across other retail assets, including retail parks.

Our Future Retail Blueprint, is based around our mission to create incredible places for people, re-think the role of the landlord, refocus on treating the occupier as a partner and deliver sustainable, diversified value to our investors.

In 2020, we launched a flexible partnership model based on turnover rent options, which gives our occupiers a complete range of rental options. Every street market occupier is on that model.

We then encourage customers to these areas via strategies like "Gather" – which is taking a more events-based approach to retail spaces. As part of Gather, we have been using vacant spaces across our shopping centres to curate a series of localised events to drive new types of engagement. These range from yoga and boxercise to art classes and kids' clubs. We are aiming for nearly 1,000 events to be held across our shopping centres, each year.