Upcoming Urban Outfitters, Newcastle (29 Nov 2011)

Newcastle’s upcoming Urban Outfitters store has been tantalisingly hidden behind orange boards for over a month – including when I passed by last week – but the shop’s frontage has now been unwrapped ahead of its opening a week on Friday (9 December).

While we’ve known the opening date for a while, this is the first chance we’ve had to see what the front of the Grainger Street store looks like. So, following Dave Robson’s tip-off on the Skyscrapercity Forums last night, I went along with my camera this morning to take a look.

...and hidden away before (26 Oct 2011)

Given the building’s Listed status, and the need to work around the strange metal flashing that stretches across the frontage of that and the neighbouring stores, the shop has a relatively understated shopfront and fascia compared to UO stores elsewhere.

Upcoming Urban Outfitters, Newcastle (29 Nov 2011)

Both the shopfront and fascia are in a deep shade of red powder-coated aluminium, with fret-cut letters spelling out the name of the store. Interestingly, the letters are much smaller than Urban Outfitters’ original planning application had proposed – that would have seen them be about twice the current height, and the full width of the frontage. Seemingly, however, something a little more discreet – and, dare I say it, less bold and interesting – was needed in order to get through the planning process.

Given the resulting low-key signage, one assumes that the large shopwindow will do much of the talking once the store opens; for now, however, it’s greeting passers by with a ’HELLUO NEWCASTLE!’ message, in a cheeky play on its name.

Upcoming Urban Outfitters, Newcastle (29 Nov 2011)

The watchful presence of several contractors made it difficult to lurk for long or get much of a view inside, though the fact that building work is still underway obviously means that there are no fixtures or stock in place yet. However, the store’s imminent opening – in just ten days’ time – must suggest that we’ll see some activity on the merchandising front later this week.

Grainger Street, with Urban Outfitters on the left (29 Nov 2011)

As I explained in my first blog about this development, back in January last year, the shop’s ground floor – which was formerly Jigsaw’s unit – will represent a relatively small part of the three-storey unit. Much of the retail floorspace is on the first and second floors – spanning the adjacent Calvin Klein Underwear, Fat Face, Phones 4u and Vodafone stores – in the area that used to be occupied by the Green Market at High Friars and, before that, the MVC record shop.

As I noted back then, however, the property has never been under the same ownership as the Eldon Square shopping centre, despite the ex-MVC unit being accessed from the mall and, to all intents and purposes, being perceived as part of it. Realignment of the floor levels to their historic positions means that Urban Outfitters will be accessed only from the street, with the old Eldon Square entrance – currently hidden behind boards – blocked up.

Such is the complexity of this building, shoppers who go into Urban Outfitters on 9 December can surely be forgiven if their first reaction is “where did all this upstairs space come from?”

CKU window poster (8 Aug 2011)

While the rescue of Newcastle’s TJ Hughes store ensures that the value stretch of Grainger Street retains its retail anchor, work is also progressing well on the more upmarket developments at the street’s Monument end.

In the unit freed up by Kurt Geiger’s move to Eldon Square, the new Calvin Klein Underwear (CKU) store was being stocked when I walked past this morning, suggesting that its opening is imminent. This makes sense, given that the shop’s window poster claims that it will open in ‘August 2011′, but there’s no information as yet on the CKU website’s store locator page.

Calvin Klein Underwear and Urban Outfitters sites, Newcastle (8 Aug 2011)

While CK underwear is ubiquitous in high-end fashion stores such as House of Fraser, John Lewis, Debenhams and Asos, one thing I hadn’t realised is quite how few standalone CKU shops there currently are in the UK. The CKU website’s store locator lists just six dedicated stores in Europe, all in the UK – three in London, and one each in Manchester, Edinburgh and Glasgow – though there’s definitely a recently opened one in Cardiff too. Still, having CKU coming to Newcastle is quite a coup, and reinforces the city’s reputation as one of the country’s top retail locations.

Management positions at Urban Outfitters, Newcastle (17 Aug 2011)

Next door, work to transform the old Green Market and adjacent former Jigsaw unit into the North East’s first branch of Urban Outfitters is also well underway. Management positions at the store are currently being advertised on the Urban Outfitters website, which claims that the shop will be opening “this autumn”. The roles on offer – including managers for Womenswear, Menswear, Women’s Accessories and Housewares – also provide some clues regarding the categories that the store will stock.

Compared to CKU, Urban Outfitters has a slightly more extensive UK store estate so far – 16 stores, according to its website, of which four are in London – but again, it’s a positive sign that Newcastle has secured the retailer ahead of other major centres such as Nottingham, Norwich, Leicester or Reading.

Jaeger, Newcastle (8 Aug 2011)

One thing that remains to be seen, of course, is how far the opening of these and other top fashion stores (such as the recent arrival of Jaeger) marks the beginning of a new higher-end retail cluster in the city.

Market Street, Newcastle, in 2000

We’ve seen it before, a decade ago, when the arrival of fashion stores such as Jigsaw Menswear, Hobbs, Envy and Kookai encouraged the Grainger Town Project to herald Market Street as the ‘Bond Street of the North’. However, the letting of the nearby anchor unit to TJ Hughes – rather than the Harvey Nichols or Selfridges that had been originally hoped – rather undermined that vision. Of the fashion retailers that set up back then in Market Street, none remain today.

However, if a successful Urban Outfitters store can be the “high quality fashion” anchor for Grainger Town that TJ Hughes never has been, Newcastle might yet be able to develop its very own ‘Bond Street’.

Newcastle's TJ Hughes (8 Aug 2011)

There was good news for Newcastle city centre earlier this week, with the announcement that the TJ Hughes store in Grainger Street had been sold, preventing the loss of 76 jobs. However, the collapsed department store chain’s Middlesbrough branch is one of eight that will close down for good by Thursday next week (18 August), leaving a large hole in the town’s Captain Cook Square shopping centre.

The Newcastle store and another in Widnes have been bought by Lewis’s Home Retail, a company owned by The Benross Group – a home and garden wholesaler that is already one of TJ Hughes’ major suppliers. The deal brings the total number of TJ’s sites acquired by Lewis’s to six, following the purchase of stores in Liverpool, Glasgow, Eastbourne and Sheffield – as well as the TJ Hughes brand – at the start of August.

Lewis’s Home Retail acquired the rights to the iconic Lewis’s brand only last month, following the sale of assets owned by the collapsed Vergo Retail chain. However, Benross’ MD Anil Juneja has confirmed that the acquired stores will retain their existing TJ Hughes fascias with a view to building the chain back up again over time.

Lewis’s, meanwhile, is set to be revived separately, starting with a retail park store in Bury. The submitted plans for the ‘Lewis’s Home’ store suggest that while the relaunched chain will focus on homewares rather than a full department store offer, the familiar blue and white Lewis’s logo (below) is poised to make a comeback.

Revived Lewis's Home logo

The sale of the Newcastle TJ Hughes store avoids the headache of a large empty unit in a slightly off-centre pitch within Newcastle city centre. Covering three floors and with a gross area of 91,000 sq ft (8,500 sqm), the unit is one of the city’s largest outside of Eldon Square and Northumberland Street, and its vacancy would most likely have seen the space being divided up.

TJ Hughes has traded from the purpose-built unit since 2002, but the location is associated with two of Newcastle’s most well-loved department store names: Bainbridge (now John Lewis), which expanded across the site from 1838 to 1976 before relocating to Eldon Square; and Binns (House of Fraser), which occupied the site between 1977 and 1995. Most of the site was demolished and redeveloped following Binns’ departure, but apart from not having a frontage to Market Street, today’s TJ Hughes has a broadly similar footprint to its predecessor.

TJ Hughes, Newcastle (13 Aug 2011)

Interestingly, of the six TJ Hughes sites acquired by Lewis’s, three have a House of Fraser connection. As well as Newcastle, the stores in Sheffield and Eastbourne are both ex-House of Fraser sites that TJ Hughes acquired in 1997. The Liverpool site is the original TJ Hughes flagship in London Road; Glasgow’s Trongate store is a former C&A; and the Widnes shop occupies a unit in the modern Green Oaks Shopping Centre.

Former Woolworths (now TJ Hughes), Westfield Derby (23 Dec 2010)

Indeed, over the years TJ Hughes has played an important role in mopping up large-format space that other retailers have left behind. Most recently, it has acquired a number of high-profile former Woolworths sites, including in Belfast, Derby, Hanley, Southend, Walsall and Nuneaton.

Former Woolworths (now TJ Hughes), Nuneaton (24 Aug 2010)

When I visited Nuneaton in August last year, work was underway to transform the town’s former Woolworths into a TJ Hughes; now, after less than ten months of trading, it will be closing this coming Sunday (14 August). In towns like Nuneaton – which already lost its Marks & Spencer store earlier this year – filling the former Woolworths site a second time may not be an easy task.

TJ Hughes, Sunderland (7 Sep 2009)

With six TJ Hughes stores saved, and 30 set to close over the next week, the future of the remaining 21 stores in the estate – including the Sunderland branch – is still in doubt. There’s a possibility that Benross may snap up one or two more, but its purchase of the TJ Hughes brand – ruling out any other retailers trading TJ’s stores under the existing fascia – suggests that there is little chance of more stores being acquired as going concerns.

A more likely scenario is that retailers such as BHS, H&M, Wilkinson, Marks & Spencer, Primark and Debenhams will snap up the best sites once they become vacant. The site in upmarket Lichfield, for example, may appeal to the rapidly expanding Beales or to M&S, which already has a successful Simply Food store in the city.

TJ Hughes, Lichfield (19 Mar 2010)

For both Middlesbrough and Sunderland, however, the challenge will be to find large retailers that aren’t already represented in those locations. Of the two, Middlesbrough is arguably the better unit, anchoring the modern Captain Cook Square shopping centre close to the prime Linthorpe Road thoroughfare; Sunderland’s, in High Street West, is in a fairly central location close to The Bridges shopping centre, but suffers from being an older, less attractive property that hasn’t been much improved since it housed a branch of Littlewoods.

With both Middlesbrough and Sunderland already home to almost all the likely candidates – including BHS, H&M, Debenhams, M&S, TK Maxx, Primark, Wilkinson and Next – it will be interesting to see who else, if anyone, steps up to fill the gaps.

139-153 Grainger Street, Newcastle (22 Jan 2010)

As someone with an appetite for retail news stories, I like to occasionally visit Newcastle City Council’s planning applications website. Often, planning applications are where interesting developments in the world of retail first come to light, or can be useful in confirming speculation that such-and-such a retailer is indeed looking to move into such-and-such a property.

The latest application to capture my attention (2009/1844/01/LBC) relates to 139-153 Grainger Street in Newcastle city centre, close to Grey’s Monument and the High Friars entrance to Eldon Square. As you can see, the summary text of the application suggests that some quite significant reconfiguration of the property is on the cards:

Listed Building Application: Internal works to all floors including reinstatement of original 2nd floor level, creation of lift shaft from basement to 3rd floor, removal and installation of partitions, removal of staircase from basement to 1st floor and creation of staircase from 2nd to first floor.

What, you might ask, occupies 139-153 Grainger Street at the moment? Well, Grade II-listed and part of Richard Grainger’s celebrated 1830s development of the city centre, the building’s ground floor currently houses retailers such as Vodafone, Phones 4U, Dune, Jigsaw and Kurt Geiger. However, the adjacent French Connection store is a separate property.

Though it’s difficult to conceive from the street, the first and second floors of 139-153 Grainger Street – accessible only from inside the Eldon Square shopping centre – are what accommodate the current Green Market at High Friars, and before that the ill-fated music retailer MVC. (I, for one, had not appreciated until now that the MVC / Green Market site is not an integral part of the Eldon Square mall, but instead is under the entirely separate ownership of Aviva Investors Pensions Ltd.) Somewhat controversially, you may recall, the Green Market at High Friars opened in May 2007 as a temporary replacement of sorts for the previous and much larger Greenmarket (spelt as one word) in Clayton Street, which was closed down in order to make space for the St Andrew’s Way extension of Eldon Square.

Green Market entrance, Nelson Street (22 Jan 2010)

None the wiser as to how these existing retail uses would be affected by the proposed changes, I trawled through the 34 documents attached to the application – containing plans, correspondence and other information – in order to draw some conclusions. This exercise revealed some interesting findings.

First, the most notable structural change proposed will involve the second floor of the building – previously lowered in the 1980s to align with the mall level of the Eldon Square shopping centre – being restored to its original height. This will result in the floor levels of the building once again corresponding to the proportions of the façade, where currently the lowered second floor is visible through the first floor windows. At the moment, if I understand correctly, the second floor is what houses the upper level of the Green Market.

Current second floor level visible through first floor windows (22 Jan 2010)

Second – and perhaps most significantly – the Design and Access Statement prepared by the planning consultants states that “A new tenant has been secured for the building who will occupy one of the ground floor units and the remainder of the upper floors”. The first and second floors will be for retail use, with the third floor providing “staff facilities and storage”.

Existing ground floor retailers at 139-153 Grainger Street (22 Jan 2010)

To allow the building to function as a three-storey unit for a single retailer, the plans also envisage the insertion of stairs and a lift to link together all the floors. In addition, the Design and Access Statement notes that “there will no longer be a connection between the building and the Eldon Shopping Centre [sic] and a dividing wall is proposed between the two buildings”.

So, in summary, what does all this actually mean?

1. A new and quite sizeable three-storey unit is being created for a tenant that has already been signed up – but we don’t know who yet. Could it perhaps be Urban Outfitters, recently speculated to be coming to Newcastle, and which would sit well among the other fashion stores at that end of Grainger Street? If so, this would be a significant shot in the arm for Grainger Town, given that it has seemed to be struggling of late.
2. One of the existing retailers facing Grainger Street must be about to leave or move in order to free up the ground floor space that is required. I’m not aware, however, that any of the current retailers in the building are signed up to move to the Eldon Square extension.
3. The proposed development will inevitably involve the closure of the Green Market at High Friars.

The apparent closure of the Green Market at High Friars is not wholly unexpected – when I dropped by a few days ago it was quite a sad experience, with only a handful of stallholders hanging on across the two floors. Indeed, when the plan to include a new Greenmarket within the St Andrew’s Way redevelopment was dropped in June 2008, many of the former traders had either wound down their businesses following the closure of the previous Greenmarket, had relocated to the nearby Grainger Market, or were struggling to operate successfully from the out-of-the-way High Friars site.

Nevertheless, unless I’ve missed something, the lack of any coverage – or perhaps even awareness – of what appears to be the current Green Market’s impending closure is surprising.

True, today’s Green Market is undoubtedly a pale imitation of its predecessors, and it’s difficult to make much of a case for saving what remains. However, given the Green Market’s long history – starting as an open-air market outside St Andrew’s Church in Newgate Street – and multiple subsequent incarnations, it would surely be a shame if it simply vanished without anyone realising.