Taking centre stage in shopping

Feb 6 2008 by Mike Birkett for The Journal

With a catchment drawn from southern County Durham and North Yorkshire, Teesside has considerable strengths as a retail destination with a choice of centres for shoppers, says Mike Birkett.

QUITE rightly, the focus for retailers and shoppers alike is the major conurbation formed by Middlesbrough and Stockton.

This is the economic powerhouse of Teesside and it offers the greatest choice of high street and shopping centre retailing. The predominance of shopping centres in the area would appear to suggest that there is more than enough.

Middlesbrough alone has three centres within in a relatively short distance of each other, together with a strong Linthorpe Road location, while Stockton offers two shopping centres – Wellington Square and Castlegate – and the widest retail high street in England.

But given the good level of communications and a mix of socio-economic groups in the area, there continue to be development opportunities in the area with nearby Darlington ready to move from being an affluent market town to a very much more assertive centre as the gateway to Teesside.

Here Discovery Developments proposes to develop and extend the Queen Street shopping centre into a large development called The Oval, totalling 300,000sqft over two floors comprising a large space user, 34 units and 850 car parking spaces. This would be a significant increase in floorspace for a town which already has the Cornmill Centre and a strong Northgate.

By being so well connected via the A1M and the A66 east-west link, Darlington has a large catchment population of 292,000 persons with above levels of affluence. Add in the development of business space and Darlington is heading for a significant transformation. For out-of-town retailing centres on Teesside there is Teesside Retail Park and at Darlington there is the Morton Palms location.

An illustration of the strength of retailing on Teesside is the fact that the Teesside Retail Park commands the highest out-of-town rents in the region – £40 per sq ft.

Mike Birkett is a director of retail agency at Atisreal.

PAGE TWO: Renaissance in town centres.