In offices and meeting rooms around West End, a host of disparate groups and a handful of the great and good are grappling with the problems of the area’s shopping. Spurred on by winning the bid to host the 2012 Olympics, they are making serious attempts to turn 10 years of talk into action.
If they pull it off, it won’t be before time. The problems in world-famous W1 destinations like Oxford Street, Regent Street, Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square are well known: congested pavements and underground stations, choking traffic, wall-to-wall buses – 700 an hour at peak times poor public facilities and no signage. And the area faces ever-increasing competition. The latest and most serious is the 1.5m sq ft White City development in west London, due to open in 2008, which CB Richard Ellis’s retail team predicts will take over £1bn of spending per year.
Shoppers’ awareness of these problems is clear. Initial findings from a Jones Lang LaSalle report for local business improvement district the New West End Company found that “the overall shopping experience has not kept pace with consumers’ expectations” (see Love and hate, p43).
Contrast London’s plight with the international competition. Paris has transformed the Champs Elysées by reducing traffic, putting parking below ground and widening pavements. The lighting, all year round and especially at Christmas, is fantastic, and multiple escalator exits deliver people quickly from the metro straight to the shops. Milan’s main streets, like Corso Vittorio Emanuele, have been pedestrianised for years and are full of places to stop and eat. Barcelona used the 1992 Olympics to reinvent its city centre.
“London is still one of the fashion capitals of the world,” says Chris Phillips, a partner at Cushman & Wakefield Healey & Baker. His colleague and partner Peter Mace points out that despite the problems, record rents have been set in the past year – £650 per sq ft zone A in Bond Street, £425 per sq ft to Mamas & Papas in Regent Street and £550 per sq ft to Clinton Cards in Oxford Street – but that doesn’t mean nothing needs fixing.
“The New West End Company has united landlords and made them think, which is good, because complacency will undoubtedly lead to deterioration,” Phillips says.
Vince Prior, the JLL director co-ordinating the NWEC research, agrees: “The West End has survived benign neglect, but we carry on like that at our peril.”
In its 20-page summary discussion document Choices for a better West End, published last November, the NWEC’s slogan was “Doing nothing is not an option”.
For the NWEC, which was established as a BID in April 2005, time is of the essence. In two years, its constituents and majority funders, the Oxford, Regent and Bond Street retailers, will vote on whether to continue funding the BID. It has already scored some successes with improved cleaning, security and marketing, and before Christmas it worked with Transport for London to close Oxford Street to traffic on two days.
To move on to the next stage, it needs to work with the statutory bodies, especially Westminster city council, Transport for London and London mayor Ken Livingstone.
Westminster council is working on its own action plan for the three streets, which is due to come out in draft form in June. The idea, says Neil Hall, the council’s head of West End and area renewal, is that the work the NWEC has already done in the full version of Choices for a better West End (“a yard square and three inches thick,” he says) will feed into this plan, as will TfL traffic studies. The council hopes most of the cash for the improvements, £70m, will come from central government’s Olympics budget, which NWEC chief executive Gary Reeves thinks is reasonable. “The Olympics is fundamentally in east London but we all know that many visitors will eat, sleep and shop in the West End,” he says.
Hall explains: “Our aim is to have a clear set of proposals that can be funded by the end of this year, with up to 100 specific improvements planned for the next five years. Some works will start immediately. The proposals from the mayor’s commission will also influence that plan.” (See Making things happen, p46.)
The mayor’s West End central retail planning and development policy commission, set up last September, is also due to report by June.
It includes architect Lord Richard Rogers,London economist Tony Travers andtransport guru Professor Stephen Glaister and is headed by former Land Securities chief executive Ian Henderson. Henderson, who also chairs the NWEC, is examining how present and future policy should be shaped to deliver significant improvements to the West End so that aspirations and any policy changes can be incorporated in the 2008 revised London Plan.
Broadly speaking, the commission is looking “at the big stuff”, JLL’s Prior says. This includes transport.
There are rumours that TfL is about to commit to redeveloping Tottenham Court Road station in time for the Olympics.The NWEC would like to see the 24 bus routes that pass through Oxford, Regent and Bond Streets cut to two, creating a “super-route”. It would also like to see redevelopment of “gateway sites” at St Giles Circus at the eastern entrance to Oxford St; Piccadilly Circus at the southern end of Regent St; and Marble Arch at the western end of Oxford Street.
The mayor also wants sites for flagship stores, modern-sized shops, restaurants and an international convention centre, especially at Oxford Street’s tatty eastern end. “A convention centre could do London a lot of good,” says Henderson. “Look at Frankfurt – it’s famous for its business fairs. And you would need good shopping, hotels and restaurants nearby.”
And Livingstone told EG: “We are working on an amendment to the London Plan that will shift the balance in favour of the redevelopment of Oxford Street.” (See p 46.)
Different interests, different priorities
All this throws up huge problems. Crossrail affects a large area of Oxford Street’s south side at St Giles Circus, as well as land further west around Hanover Square and Bond Street. The commission is believed to have pinpointed three potential sites for the convention centre: land around Centrepoint; the Post Office site at Rathbone Place; and the former Middlesex Hospital in Mortimer Street.
However, these are all owned by different landowners with their own priorities. In addition, unless the commission recommends changes, under present policies any redevelopment would have to provide a substantial amount of affordable housing.
One developer that owns land on east Oxford Street says: “How do you deal with Crossrail, two different local authorities – Camden and Westminster – with different modus operandi and policies, and different major landowners who don’t want to be pushed into schemes or masterplans that are not commercially viable? In the meantime, we’ve all got leases that need renewing. I will be interested to see how they are going to do it.”
But Henderson is optimistic. “I believe that there is an opportunity for landowners to pool resources and counter the problem of fragmentation of ownership. This could address all sorts of issues that no one has yet got to grips with.
“There’s a tide in now, and when you get a flood tide you have to take it and make sure you’re tied up fast when it goes out again.”
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Shopping in London’s West End has not kept pace with rising consumer expectations. Focus group discussions carried out for the area’s business improvement district, the New West End Company, by Jones Lang LaSalle and Sociovision, found that shoppers referred to the “love-hate relationship” they have with the area. It is seen as unique, exciting and dynamic – but also stressful. Shoppers are attracted by the huge number of flagship shops and department stores. Oxford Street, Regent Street and Bond Street have the highest concentration of retail in Europe, at 6m sq ft. But the research confirmed that many find it difficult to shop. “It’s not a place to browse. You’re there to shop, just to get on with it,” said one. The hustle and bustle has become “hassle and battle. It is so busy, you’re just crushed by the traffic and the people.” Those interviewed also mentioned the lack of places to eat and rest. Unless they lived or worked in central London they didn’t know or weren’t sure about some of the existing areas with restaurants, such as St Christopher’s Place. There was confusion about how to get to specific destinations. Their wish list of improvements included: better information provision, better basic facilities such as public toilets, a send home shopping service, a collection service and fewer tacky shops. JLL director Vince Prior, who led the project, says a second phase of research is under way and will be reported in May. Questionnaires will be conducted at various points in the West End and competing shopping centres in London and will be used as a baseline to track shoppers’ feedback over time. “The challenge is to deliver visible improvements in the short term,” he says. “Retailers aren’t going to vote to give the NWEC more money again in tough trading times unless things happen in the short term.” |
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What could be in the Oxford, Regent and Bond Street (ORB) action plan? The plan is the largest and most ambitious of five that Westminster city council has in the West End. A draft will be published jointly with Transport for London and the New West End Company in June. According to Neil Hall, Westminster’s head of West End and area urban renewal, it will contain up to 100 specific improvements to be implemented over the next five years, concentrating on transport and public realm issues – finance permitting. The ORB plan is likely to include: Reducing traffic congestion Short-term measures to cut congestion: managed taxi ranks; reducing the number of terminating bus stands. The biggest prize is the redevelopment of Tottenham Court Road tube station, which TfL is poised to announce. Implementing a co-ordinated wayfinding system in the West End in 2007 This could include signs to famous shops, such as Hamleys or Selfridges, and to places to eat, relax or park, positioned at logical arrival points such as tube stations or bus stops. Information hubs could be set up at key points between districts in the three main ORB streets, with an emphasis on the different kinds of shopping in the different districts. Bus stops will be named after the district they stand in. “Most people can’t shop the whole area – this should help them find the area or shops of most interest to them,” says JLL’s Prior. Clearing street clutter/moving street traders The council has agreed in principle to move Oxford Street’s 26 street traders, who often block busy pavements, to side streets. One option is to move them all to one street, if footfall there is high enough. The council has already moved three traders from Coventry Street. Using the side streets Welcoming spots to rest and eat off the main ORB streets could be created, modelled on places such as the restaurant enclave in Heddon Street off Regent Street, or St Christopher’s Place and Market Place off Oxford Street. The council is already talking to: ● The Portman Estate, about developing Old Quebec St, near Selfridges, in this way. Plans involve moving a street trader elsewhere. ●Private property company Marchday, about improving Cavendish Square behind John Lewis. Marchday owns the freehold of the square and the former NCP car park. The council owns the long lease. Marchday director John Orchard says they want to: take out the inside traffic lane and reclaim that land, replacing it with a right-hand turn; make the car park “the best in London”; and improve the gardens and amenities adding a café, more green space (including an all-weather surface for functions) and possible farmers’ and Christmas markets. ● TfL about removing the subways at Marble Arch and returning priority to pedestrians crossing from Hyde Park to Oxford Street. More public realm improvements such as upgraded paving and lighting. |
