“I am not an advocate, and never have been, of preserving the high street,” says Mark Williams, executive director of RivingtonHark, “because when people talk about the high street, that’s a short cut for saying retail.”
It is not a line you expect to hear from someone who has spent so much of their career in the retail sector, decades of that as a surveyor running the UK and European retail capital markets team at DTZ, as president of Revo (formerly known as the British Council of Shopping Centres) and as chairman of the government’s task force on distressed retail property.
They are also not the words you expect to hear from someone who for the past four years has been growing RivingtonHark, a business that invests in, regenerates and transforms town centres – places that have traditionally been heavy with retail. Until he explains.
“I’m absolutely in the business of generating jobs, but this is not about generating and preserving retail space,” says Williams.
Williams, who confesses to playing a role in “killing off every other use” in town centres through the mass proliferation of shopping centres early in his career, is now on a mission to bring mixed-use development and employment back to the UK’s towns and cities.
At RivingtonHark, formed through Hark Group’s takeover of Rivington Land, run by David Lewis, in 2019, Williams and Lewis are now steering a portfolio of projects valued at some £900m.
Lewis looks after the group’s public sector assets, which include the recently completed Northgate in Chester and Copr Bay in Swansea (pictured above), two mixed-use projects in run-down, unloved parts of the country, where the business knew it could make a difference.
“I think we would say, without any hesitation, that for every single asset we touch, a core part of the plan is that it will be improved when we leave,” says Williams. “Our view is that if you’re going to own investments in towns and city centres then you have a social responsibility to ensure that they are meeting the needs of the residents and the general stakeholders. And if you don’t have that, our view is that you shouldn’t be investing.”
Williams focuses on strategic masterplanning, stakeholder engagement, investment and funding at RivingtonHark, and with a new relationship with Redical Holdings to acquire assets across the UK, he is busy hunting out opportunities.
Since debuting in the UK in 2021, Redical has bought the 170,000 sq ft Clayton Square shopping centre in Liverpool from Patrizia, the 209,000 sq ft Victoria Quarter and 405,000 sq ft Victoria Gate shopping centres in Leeds from Hammerson and, most recently, the 790,000 sq ft Liberty in Romford. The fund, backed by an overseas pension giant, has raised a total of £300m in equity so far for its expansion, with ambitions to build that out to £1bn. RivingtonHark is retained as its strategic adviser.
But it is not the volume of equity Redical has to invest that excites Williams the most, it is the way it wants to see that capital invested.
Walking the ESG talk
“We are looking to change, create, evolve and improve towns and city centres,” says Williams, “and there isn’t a single project we have where, hand on heart, I can’t say that a core part of stakeholder engagement is about measuring on a very strict ESG criteria and a fundamental belief by the people in this business that if we are working on these projects then there is a social aim to it as well.”
Like many investors, Redical wants to know that there is both an environmental and social value to how its money is being utilised. And it is RivingtonHark’s approach that secured that mandate.
The company has installed green walls and beehives, and ensures that it engages with local communities and, of course, delivers on its purpose of generating jobs.
But now it has to prove, measure and then improve on all of those things. To help it do that, late last year RivingtonHark appointed Neelum Choudhury as head of sustainability, a new role in the business. Choudhury joined the business from CBRE and is tasked with reviewing the firm’s policies, everything it is doing across each of its assets, and coming up with some key benchmarks.
“We have about 20 beehives, we collect honey, we do lots of things and there are lots of awards we’ve won, but I call all of that stuff fluffy,” says Williams, “because I can’t measure it. It’s a big investment to have someone here who is going to be measuring and challenging us.”
Williams and the team are clearly up for the challenge. The business has more than doubled over the past two years, in portfolio size, headcount and its own office floorspace. It is also working hard on its own diversity and inclusion agenda, aware that the three guys at the top are three white guys.
Alongside delivering on Redical’s ambitions for the UK, the firm has been buying for AnaCap, is doing work for private clients such as Deutsche Bank, looking closely at its 380,000 sq ft of holdings in Enfield and figuring out what it should do with them, and has some major town centre regeneration work to do in Romford following its acquisition of the Liberty mall last summer.
Work continues to flow in on the public sector side too. The business is advising Newcastle City Council on its City Centre Transformation Programme and has just been appointed by Shropshire Council to take the lead on the regeneration of the Riverside and Smithfield areas of Shrewsbury.
I think we would say, without any hesitation, that for every single asset we touch, a core part of the plan is that it will be improved when we leave
The value of partnership
For Williams, much of the success and growth of the whole company comes from its relationship with the public sector – the fact that, through Lewis and his team, RivingtonHark can gain direct access to local authority leaders and chief executives to understand issues, challenges and opportunities and to find ways that the projects they work on can deliver for the greater good.
He cites Mill Gate in Bury as a perfect example of public and private sectors working together to make a place better.
Mill Gate is a key strategic site in the heart of the town, providing some 400,000 sq ft of community and convenience shopping. When RivingtonHark bought it from Scottish Widows, it was broken. It was some 40% vacant and there was office space that had been unused for more than two decades. The scheme is now 96% let and much of those offices are now back in use.
Despite the increased income flows, RivingtonHark needed an exit. However, because the scheme was essentially Bury’s town centre, it knew the council was the ideal buyer so worked on delivering a masterplan for the local authority outlining exactly what Mill Gate could deliver. Then, in April 2022, specialist developer Bruntwood came in, formed a jv and bought the site with the council.
“To me, that is absolutely the right outcome,” says Williams.
After decades in the game, seeing the rise and fall of retail and surviving more than one recession, Williams still has an untempered excitement to his voice when he talks about his job.
“The enthusiasm is that we’re pushing in customers that people want,” he says. “I am really proud of what we are doing, how we are improving places and how the public love it because it is meeting their needs. That’s the buzz. I just think that we are making places better and, fundamentally, isn’t that what real estate should be doing?”
RivingtonHark at a glance
Founded: 2019
Led by: Mark Williams, David Lewis and Mark Harvey
Key projects:
- Victoria, Leeds: 625,000 sq ft of city centre space where the firm is tasked with curating and animating an iconic ownership with quality retail, leisure, F&B and other uses
- Copr Bay, Swansea: £135m regeneration of a failed shopping centre and brownfield site in the middle of the city
- St John’s, Liverpool: Refurbishment, repurposing and reimagining of 540,000 sq ft to create a new gateway to the city
- The Liberty, Romford: 13 acres of the town centre with the opportunity to not only regenerate the retail and leisure mix, but to work with the local council to deliver more than 500 new homes.
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