Will Grosvenor deliver on it's promises - will L1 be a success?

[Paul D]

Originally Posted by Kenrick

I posted this Grosvenor contact (below) here a week or two ago but since this debate seems to have gone full circle - again - it's probably worth posting up again. Why not send an email/call her to express the anger/digust/fears you've expressed on here?

For an update on the Liverpool One line-up, either email corinne.dourado@grosvenor.com or call on 020 7312 6115.

I agree,everything should be taken up with Grovenor,the amount of time it's taken up on here could have been sorted with a simple email to the people who know best.

[Adam(KOS)]

Originally Posted by Awayo

Doesn't Liverpool One result in a net loss of parking in the city centre? The carparks being a part of it having less capacity than the large areas of wasteland it replaces, but which as used as surface car parking space.

Waste land ? a huge amount of that land was CPOd, MCCP, BBC, Moathouse, a string of businesses along Paradise st and more besides

Of course, a lot of the transport planning for this project was based on the tram. Maybe that's why the Liverpool One shops were so appalling, they expected the entire customer base to come in from Kirkby each day and the targetted the shops that provide Kirkby's scintillating shopping offer in order to compete with Kirkby town centre.

I believe the trams are 99% back on, at an extra £100 million cost to the origional estimate.
I know that I am only guessing here.

All I can explain it by is that Grosvenor's aim is not to restablish Liverpool as a major regional shopping centre that would stop people going to places like Manchester and the Trafford Centre (places with really good shops) but to replace with existing city centre and get poor, inner city people?? who would otherwise shops more often in the New Strand, the Pyramids or whatever the hell is out in Old Swan to shop in town.

My blue
The broader the spectrum of punters the better. Too many out of price reach, high priced shops will just keep the locals away.

[Awayo]

Originally Posted by Adam(KOS)

My blue
The broader the spectrum of punters the better. Too many out of price reach, high priced shops will just keep the locals away.

Good job there is almost no decent shops then. This development will not get a broad spectrum of punter. Liverpool already has shit, low end stores. It lacks the good store that would make people from the surrounding region visit the city again for shopping as they would do so again and would also stop people from Liverpool itself going elsewhere when they want to buy anything from the cheapest shops imaginable.

This roster of stores belongs to Scunthorpe or Skelmersdale, not a major city centre and definately not one which want to compete with cities that aren't completely poor and fucked. Is this what Liverpool is? The sort of place that celebrates a new Debenhams? Wigan or Northampton, not a big city. Because shopping wise, that is the only new thing this development has so far brought in.

[bustcapl]

awayo whats your prob.. as far as i am aware you dont even live in Liverpool so i struggle to comprehend your obsession with the shops it has.... has it occured that Grovesnor are developing a site that suits the people that live here and near here... not those who live elsewhere and very rarely shop here.

it seems you want rows upon rows of shops that no scouser will want too nor afford to be able to shop in.... to help develop liverpool's culture as the window shopping capital of the world??? I know i would rather have a load of busy shops that mean something too me than shops that appeal to salaries of over 100K and only ever have people in at the weekend.!!



I though it was the women who loved shopping but you have disproved this theory ;-)

[Scarecrow]

Ever been to Cheshire Oaks Trev? Always chocker with Liverpool accents. So is Lord Street in Southport on a weekend. Awayo has quite rightly pointed out that the shopping fare being dished out by Grosvenor is no better (and IMO, currently worse) than these places. All the frigging laa-di-daa about a Debenhams of all places (ignore John Lewis, we already have one). Southport has had a Debenhams since time began, and its only just the second best department store that the town has.

Noticed the Bath Store in a prominent spot on Hanover Street the other day. Southport also has one in a shed next to ASDA. From what I've heard and seen of the current Grosvenor offering, they'd struggle to entice me away from the fucking New Mersey Retail Park.

The £100k Scousers are no longer welcome in this city by the sounds of it.

[bustcapl]

yes been to both Mark but this place is still the best part of a year away from opening.... with approx 200 units to fill... wit the best will in the world you aint gonna get 200 designer boutiques .... this aint Paris afterall!

[interpreter]

I agree with the folks who point out the need to wait and see more of the completed project and the tentants Liverpool one fills up with, there are retailers outthere who do not want their name on the list until full negotiations have been completed.... if you want to find out info,why not go into the paradise project information office i found the staff in there friendly and informative... the list to some extent is never up todate or complete.... as for Liverpool have no shopping... well St Johns... Clayton sq... Met Quarter... Cavern Walks... Church st... Bold st... Renshaw st... etc... and some icing on the cake... LIverpool One... or is my glass too half full.

[Evertonian]

I suspect whats happening here is the rents are too high and they're taking the piss and the big retailersaren't prepared to have it.

[Martin S]

Originally Posted by Awayo

Good job there is almost no decent shops then. This development will not get a broad spectrum of punter. Liverpool already has shit, low end stores. It lacks the good store that would make people from the surrounding region visit the city again for shopping as they would do so again and would also stop people from Liverpool itself going elsewhere when they want to buy anything from the cheapest shops imaginable.

This roster of stores belongs to Scunthorpe or Skelmersdale, not a major city centre and definately not one which want to compete with cities that aren't completely poor and fucked. Is this what Liverpool is? The sort of place that celebrates a new Debenhams? Wigan or Northampton, not a big city. Because shopping wise, that is the only new thing this development has so far brought in.

Awayo lad. Apologies if someone has asked you this before but why are you such an expert on shopping? I had never heard of Peacocks or Bathstore until you told us what rubbish they were but you always seem to be familiar with every type of shop in the country, what markets they trade in, what produce they sell, what sort of people they attract.

Is this because you are something big in retail or are you some strange bloke who is into shopping?

[bustcapl]

I am with you interpreter.... lets judge this when its 6 months after it has opened .... met quater opened 40 % let and is now full .... i think Met quater proved us all wrong!

[Awayo]

Bloody hell Martin.

I'm a strange bloke who is not into shopping rather. But I can recognise the sort of shops I see only in the shabbiest parts of the most failing cities (Stoke's equivalent of St John's, say, not the "best" part of its poor shopping offer).

And that's what this list of stores is. It isn't even High Street. Most English high streets are better than this. It is the high street of a poor district of London maybe or of a failing town whose traditional shopping has been bypassed by a massive nearby shopping centre. Say Bedford High Street, wrt Milton Keynes (yes, it has a Debenhams too).

I seem relentless on this issue only because the news is so relentlessly bad. A few here seem to be arguing against me out of local pride. Ironically that is also my motivation. My loyalty to Liverpool is surely evident by most of what I say here. That's why this is pissing me off.

I find it baffling that only Bunny, Sebo and Poli seem to be getting what is happening here.

Yes, maybe, there are reasons why the shops signed up so far are the worst secured for any major shopping development in decades and that's part of a Grosvenor plan that will result in shops that aren't absolutely appalling being signed up from now on. It's a weird plan though. As I've said, they've not started up with "High Street", in fact they've began with "Turd Alley". Who wants to shop there? I don't.

The good shops are always just around the corner. I know...

[liverpolitan]

Tom has raised the John Lewis issue - pointing out that they will have opening up an expanded and improved store. That does I think have some potential. In central London there are two John Lewis's: the original Oxford Street one, which is huge and attracts a very wide range of shoppers. There is then Peter Jones in Sloane Square, which is a John Lewis but is full of posh people. I only go there because it's the nearest big Dept store to my work, and it definately attracts a posher and richer clientele than the Oxford Street one - you can just tell.

Which means that a John Lewis is actually quite an elastic kind of store, and a good branch with a good range of stock could serve the higher end market.

I still think we'll have to wait 5 years or so to see something upmarket move to town - if not in L1 then close to it (someone mentioned the Police headquarters site, but there are also hugely under-used premises in Lord Street).

Awayo - I suppose we have to accept market realities. Okay Grosvenor have not delivered on their promises. Whether that was a scam or not who knows. There was certainly an aspiration for better, on their part, and that of the city. But the market dictates these things - there is no Ministry of Shopping to instruct Selfridges to move their struggling central Manchester store to Liverpool 1. If no decent new stores want to move to Liverpool, what can Grosvenor do but pillage the rest of the city for tenants? We surely don't want it opening half empty?

[bustcapl]

The success of the scheme will depend on a number of things, how much of it is just going to be shops moving into new premises or second remises... what we must remember is that the opening of this facility massively increases the size of the city centre retail core .... therefor a number of the shops listed below will open second city centre shops....
If al the shops were too just close and re-open then it would be an unmitigated disaster for Lord St / Church St .

Whateevr comes and goes it is going to take years before the retail market settles down ... looking at the list below i think it leaves some 150 units that still need to be filled, so there is plenty of time for the success or failure of this scheme to be decided.

I have annotated the list as to what i think will be happening?

Please feel free to correct me as appropriate!?



BARCLAYS - consolidation of several city centre branches
BARRATTS -
BATHSTORE - New to city
BBC - movement of old pemises
BODY SHOP - new premises
CARPHONE WAREHOUSE - new pemises
CLINTONS - new premises
DEBENHAMS - New to the city
ERNEST JONES - New premsises
ESPRIT - Movement from Met quater?
FAITH - New premsises
FLANNELS - Movement from Met quater
FRED PERRY - New to city
GAME - 2nd prmises
GOLDSMITHS - dont know
H&M - New premsises?
H SAMUEL - New premises
JANE NORMAN - New premises
JD/NIKE - New to the city ?
JOHN LEWIS - Movement of premises
JONES - dont know
KAREN MILLEN - Movement of premises
NEW LOOK - INcrease i city centre offering
OASIS - ?
ODEON - New to the city centre
OPTICAL EXPRESS - New premises
ORANGE - New premises
O2 - New premises
PEACOCKS - New premises
PUMA -New to city
REISS LADIES _ new to city
REPUBLIC - new to city?
SCOTTS - dont know
SONY - New to city centre
SPORTS WORLD -New premises
SUPERDRUG _new premises
TED BAKER _new premises
THE PERFUME SHOP _ new premises
TOPSHOP/TOPMAN - Upgrade of current retail offering
USC - dont know
VIRGIN MEGASTORES - new premises
WAREHOUSE - new premsies
3 STORE -dont know




CAFE ROUGE - 2nd city premises
COSTA - 100,000 city premises
GOURMET BURGER KITCHEN - new to the city
LAS IGUANAS - new to the city centre
PIZZA HUT - 2nd city premises
STARBUCKS - 100,000 city premises
WAGAMAMA - new to the city
YO SUSHI - new to the city
ZIZZI - new to the city

[Babaloo]

Describing something as 'shit' is par for the course on internet forums. Sometimes it can be amusing but this type of 'analysis' resting on the usage of such a lazy adjective has a very short shelf life before it becomes trite and grating.

Personally I'm neither overwhelmed nor underwhelmed by the selection so far. People who know about these things (I'm not one) seem to think that things are par for the course at this stage and it makes sense to me to see what Grosvenor has done up to know as part of a multi-stage shopping renaissance. This is stage one.

I'm hoping that shops like Selfridges, Harvey Nichols. etc. DON'T come to Liverpool. My fantasy is that someone homegrown or recently arrived from outatown will turn the the existing Lewis's building on Renshaw Street into what it was designed for. This is one beautiful building that exudes more real class than anything within 193 miles of it and it's completely underused.

[bustcapl]

great shout

[buggedboy]

Right, I've emailed Grosvenor to get some further details about how many additional retail units are under negotiation and how many will be bringing new retailers to the city.

Hopefully this should set the record straight.

Personally I'm hopeful because it's going to be 18 months before this bugger is finished and another 12 months before I expect it to be getting towards being fully let.

That list on the Liverpool1 site is one quarter of the number of retail units available so we've got loads of news to come.

Personally I can't wait for the retail units at the Bluecoat to be announced. These will be much smaller independant retailers as the rent will be much much cheaper. Not that because the Bluecoat will be doing anything particularly better, but they have a wee niche market (as they don't pay corporation/council tax and don't) charge VAT).

[liverpolitan]

Originally Posted by Martin S

Awayo lad. Apologies if someone has asked you this before but why are you such an expert on shopping? I had never heard of Peacocks or Bathstore until you told us what rubbish they were but you always seem to be familiar with every type of shop in the country, what markets they trade in, what produce they sell, what sort of people they attract.

Is this because you are something big in retail or are you some strange bloke who is into shopping?

What an outrageous posting that is. Martin, I take it you don't actually go into shops, ever? And, if you ever did, you would insit on being blindfolded so as not to see what was in them, or who was in them. Also, and despite being interested in regeneration, you studiously ignore absorbing any information at all about one of the biggest sectors in the economy, and one of the most improtant single magnets of regeneration in city centres?

I find this "I don't know about shops, it's unmanly" crap absolutely ridiculous. I'm saying this because I don't see why Awayo should need to defend himself.

Let's hope, for the success of L1, that you are freakishly unusual in not wanting to know anything about shops.

[Chris B]

Originally Posted by Awayo

I find it baffling that only Bunny, Sebo and Poli seem to be getting what is happening here.

I don't think it's necessarily the case that the rest of us don't see what your seeing - we do. I think deep down most of us would have welcomed a Selfridges or Harvey Nicks (or something similar), because even we if didn't shop there, it would have attracted more people, and would have generated publicity for the scheme like the Selfridges in Birmingham or Harvey Nicks in Leeds. However just because we feel a bit disappointed that we seemingly aren't going to get a high profile anchor, doesn't mean we are going to let that slight disappointment cloud our views of the retailers that are willing to come/expand here.

So Debenhams is in every town. So what? Surely that means we should have one too? Would it not count against our retail offer if we didn't have one? Regardless of the fact it is a lesser shop than Selfridges, it still has a place on the high street. If we want a well-rounded retail offer we need to have stores like Debenhams, Bath Store, and others, even if they aren't attention grabbers.

Don't think Awayo that people don't understand where you're coming from they do - and if this time next year we still have a similar tenant list, you'll probably find a few more people singing from your hymn sheet. It's just for now the rest of us are prepared to welcome those stores who have already tipped their hat, and are prepared to give Grosvenor the benefit of the doubt on those stores that haven't.

Originally Posted by liverpolitan

what can Grosvenor do but pillage the rest of the city for tenants?

This is a very good point. If some stores don't want to come to Liverpool, what can Grosvenor do? Perhaps it's not a case of Grosvenor failing to attract specific tenants, than the tenants in question not wanting to come no matter what Grosvenor offer? Perhaps we should be pointing the finger at the oft-mentioned Selfridges and Harvey Nicks, and questioning their reasons for not coming here?

Originally Posted by liverpolitan

We surely don't want it opening half empty?

Indeed. I'd rather have it full from the word go. I know the Met Quarter filled up after opening, but is doesn't always work that way. I know it's out of the city centre but the shopping mall attached to the Asda at Hunts Cross is about 80% empty after more than 20 years. I'd be more concerned by an empty unit than by a Peacocks.

[T0M]

Originally Posted by liverpolitan

Tom has raised the John Lewis issue - pointing out that they will have opening up an expanded and improved store. That does I think have some potential. In central London there are two John Lewis's: the original Oxford Street one, which is huge and attracts a very wide range of shoppers. There is then Peter Jones in Sloane Square, which is a John Lewis but is full of posh people. I only go there because it's the nearest big Dept store to my work, and it definately attracts a posher and richer clientele than the Oxford Street one - you can just tell.

Which means that a John Lewis is actually quite an elastic kind of store, and a good branch with a good range of stock could serve the higher end market.

I still think we'll have to wait 5 years or so to see something upmarket move to town - if not in L1 then close to it (someone mentioned the Police headquarters site, but there are also hugely under-used premises in Lord Street).

Awayo - I suppose we have to accept market realities. Okay Grosvenor have not delivered on their promises. Whether that was a scam or not who knows. There was certainly an aspiration for better, on their part, and that of the city. But the market dictates these things - there is no Ministry of Shopping to instruct Selfridges to move their struggling central Manchester store to Liverpool 1. If no decent new stores want to move to Liverpool, what can Grosvenor do but pillage the rest of the city for tenants? We surely don't want it opening half empty?

As Poli points out, it's not really fair to dismiss the significance of the new John Lewis by simply stating that 'we've already got one'. We don't already have one big enough to entice people away from Manchester, we will have once the new store is open. When I was in the states I went to several major department stores which opperate on a Selfridges style sub-let system, including Macy's and Bloomingdales, and I soon began to realise that John Lewis is one of the all round finest department stores in the world. In terms of the layout, the brands they stock, their staff, prices and the general atmostphere is one that it genuinely pleasant to shop in. Plus their customer service and standard gaurantees are some of the best in the business.

Add to this the fact that they opperate in a unique cooperative in which the employees are also the company shareholders and I wouldn't trade the new John Lewis for any of the 'up market' department stores mooted to date. If it wasn't for the L1 development the site of the new John Lewis would just be derelict land.

Poli's also right that there is an element of the letting process that Grosvenor simply can't control, and therefore there must be a degree to which they can't be held responsible for the current letting situation. (Yes they shouldn't have promised things they couldn't deliver, but we won't be able to fairly judge them on their promises until at least 12 months after it's open).

They seem to have opperated on a 'if-you-built-it-they-will-come' principle, which is always a risk, but sometimes a necessary one. The city has been waiting for years for new shops to knock at it's door asking for space, and guess what, nothing happened. Now we've made the space, and there's an element of 'wait and see' going on. Grosvenor have taken a gamble, but we seem to forget that it's them, not us, who have invested close to a billion pounds in this development, therefore they have a much greater incentive for it to succeed than any of us do. And by succeed I mean fill it with the types of shops they promised us.

Awayo you are still playing a Catch 22 game with the letting list. If a decent store relocates (even if it's into better, bigger premises) you dismiss it by saying 'we've already got one - where are the new shops' and when we get a new shop like the bathstore you say 'it's shit, we didn't want one' (which by the way isn't true, it's a decent bathroom shop which the city previously lacked and fits perfectly in the 'home furnishings' location in which it's been placed). What you have failed to do for the duration of this argument is provide a list of the shops you would like to see (not including department stores which we know we won't be getting - get over it). That way, we'll all be able to see what your mysterious criteria for judging the success of the scheme is. And when one of those shops is announced we can all cheer together for once!

[Awayo]

No Tom. Good new shops. That's what Liverpool lacks. That is what Liverpool One was commissioned by the council to attract.

Not the worst shops from the existing city centre, nor half decent shops from the existing city centre. Good. New. Shops. Want it in another language? Braille? Morse sodding code?

Bath Store is average and not unwelcome. But a Bathstore and its ilk, although better news than the relentless relocations of some of the worst stores in Liverpool into Liverpool One, will not bring people back into the city to shop, it will not stem the decline of Liverpool as a shopping city. It will barely entice people in from some parts of Liverpool not to mind anywhere else. As Bunny says, if the list of stores in Liverpool One stays as it is, he won't bother diverting his shopping trips from New Mersey Retail Park in Speke.

Good new shops. Got it? That's what Liverpool lacks; that's what Liverpool needs; that's what Liverpool One was built to bring in. Maybe it failed or maybe Grosvenor had other ideas.