The St David’s shopping centre has helped to turn Cardiff into a retail success story, according to commercial property specialist Colliers International.
The 2016 National Retail Barometer from the global real estate company shows vacancy rates for retail floor space have declined in the Welsh capital over the past year, from 4.9 per cent in 2015 to 3.2 per cent in 2016.
“A contributing factor to the high occupancy achieved in Cardiff could be the modern nature of the prime shopping provision delivered through the St David’s Centre,” said Colliers International retail director Nick Turk, who covers South Wales and the South West.
The report goes on to explain that St David’s, which has over 180 stores, is among modern shopping centres built with present day occupier requirements in mind, with average unit sizes across prime pitch of 5,200 sq ft.
Nick Turk said: “Single ownership of shopping centres results in the ability to move tenants within a scheme and knock units together to provide the right configuration for high profile brands. In the past year, St David’s has created suitable units in this way to attract Victoria’s Secret.”
The Colliers International National Retail Barometer has tracked the openings of 10 international brands, across both luxury and mass markets, none of whom had a significant UK presence prior to the 2008 economic downturn.
The brands are Michael Kors, Victoria’s Secret, Zara Home, Nespresso, Anthropologie, Urban Decay, & Other Stories, T2, KIKO Milano, and Smiggle.
The Colliers International National Retail Barometer uses proprietary Prime Zone A rents and centre vacancy data to monitor the health of the UK retail property market, and also tracks rental growth.
The latest Barometer for 2016 has found that no major UK cities have recorded a decline in rents since 2014, whilst 11 have seen a steady increase in rents.
Nick Turk said that in general larger towns and cities have performed best, often because they have been more successful in attracting shoppers who are prepared to travel further to these locations, attracted by experiential shopping and ample parking.
He said: “This increasing polarisation across the retail hierarchy is the result of changing shopping habits. Consumers are diverting an increasing proportion of their discretionary spend online, but a recent study by Verdict and British Land estimated that 89 per cent of all UK retail sales touch a physical store at some point in the customer journey from research to purchase.
“Over the past few years, we’ve seen that shoppers are looking for a diversity of retail, restaurants and leisure all in the one concentrated area. Larger centres are the logical choice to supplement online shopping.”