Northumberland Street, Newcastle (14 Mar 2011)

I took advantage of today’s gorgeous weather, and the fact that I was in town anyway, to capture some shots of Newcastle’s Northumberland Street before the quite significant changes to its retail tenants get underway next month.

I’m always conscious of taking relatively few photos of Northumberland Street, largely due to a combination of obstructions – lots of people, obviously, but also the pedestrianised street’s tendency to be cluttered up with street furniture, market stalls, delivery vehicles and people digging it up. However, given that at least two current retailers on the street will have moved on by the end of next month, it seemed a timely opportunity to head down there with my camera.

Rereading my piece last week about Clas Ohlson coming to Newcastle, I was aware that, in all the excitement, I’d barely reflected at all upon Collectables’ departure to make way for the Swedish retailer.

Collectables in Northumberland Street, Newcastle (14 Mar 2011)

The property housing the store has quite an interesting history – it was Littlewoods for many years, before being subdivided into H&M, Collectables and WHSmith in 1999, all of which have traded there ever since.

Collectables is something of a North East success story, growing from a single barrow at MetroCentre in 1986 to today’s chain of 12 stores from Castleford to Alnwick selling a wide range of glass, china, handbags, jewellery and kitchenware. However, even before Clas Ohlson’s announcement last week – which, I understand, precipitated Collectables’ own announcement later the same day – there were clues that something was afoot with the Newcastle store.

Collectables newspaper ad, 16 February 2011

A month ago, the store was closed for several days ahead of a £1.1m ‘Bad Weather Clearance Sale’, while stock was transfered in from other branches. This did make me wonder about Collectables’ long-term plans for the site.

Visiting the store today, the clearance basically seems to have evolved into a ‘Closing Down’ sale, with posters confirming the shop’s permanent closure due to the ‘end of lease’, but making reference to its planned relocation to an as-yet-unconfirmed “out-of-town-location”.

The shop was packed when I visited today, with the perennially popular instore restaurant doing a roaring trade. I doubt that Clas Ohlson plans to retain it, but there’s no doubt that the restaurant currently does a great job of bringing people into and through the store.

Echoing the information on Collectables’ website, a staff member confirmed to me that the store is set to close by April 19th, giving Clas Ohlson at least three months to undertake its transformation.

I’m curious to see how Clas Ohlson deals with the narrow street frontage and the need to entice people down the escalator into the basement store. You can achieve a lot with some creativity, colour and bold signage, and all those ingredients will be important here.

Cotswold, Northumberland Street, Newcastle (14 Mar 2011)

A little further along the street, one store that has already had to deal with a narrow street frontage is the recently opened Cotswold Outdoor, which occupies the first and second floors – formerly the Hustler Pool Club and Leo’s Restaurant – above the combined Currys and PC World. Though I blogged about the store during its development last summer, I was aware of not having made any comment since it opened back in October.

The store’s entrance and signage certainly makes bold use of the corporate red, while a mock rockface makes a striking impression upon entry. Once up the escalator, the amount of space over the two sales floors is surprising, immediately making Cotswold the flagship outdoor store in Newcastle. When I last visited, I was particularly impressed by the store’s superb range of walking and travel guides, an area in which many outdoor stores disappoint. Overall, the impression that Cotswold’s Newcastle store gives is of a quality retailer that is an authority in its field. I hope it does well, and I’ll certainly check out the store again in advance of my next walking holiday.

Bank, Northumberland Street, Newcastle (14 Mar 2011)

Another new arrival last October that I hadn’t yet captured in its finished state is Bank, the JD-owned young fashion chain, which I previously photographed in July. The clean, modern shopfront and elegant signage is undoubtedly a vast improvement on the Priceless Shoes store that it replaced.

Next, Northumberland Street, Newcastle (14 Mar 2011)

Further along, another store set to join Collectables in leaving the street next month is Newcastle’s current Next, when it moves into the new, 55,000 sq ft premises in Eldon Square that I last wrote about a fortnight ago. This will give BHS the best part of six months to transform the site ahead of the planned opening of its new store in October.

Former BHS, Northumberland Street, Newcastle (14 Mar 2011)

Meanwhile, the old BHS – which closed its doors last month – had all its logos removed not long after closure and looks to be awaiting its incorporation into the existing Primark store next door. A notice in the former BHS window thanks shoppers for their “custom over the years”, and confirms that “we will open again in Newcastle in the autumn and look forward to welcoming you to our new store.”

Notice at former Newcastle BHS (14 Mar 2011)

Again, it will be interesting to see the extent of any changes to the building’s external appearance as Primark merges BHS’s lower-ground and ground floors with its own existing ground and first floors. Primark’s first floor window was a recent insertion, punched into the blank frontage when it took over the premises from C&A in 2000. Though the symmetry works with Primark’s existing entrance and signage, it will start to look odd when one retailer occupies the entire building.

I hadn’t realised that when Primark acquired its 50,000 sq ft Newcastle site 11 years ago, it was, at the time, the retailer’s largest store. It’s a sign of Primark’s incredible success over the last decade that this store is now considered relatively compact, and will almost double in size once the incorporation of the old BHS site is complete.

Overall, it’s certainly proving a busy time for movements on Northumberland Street, despite research by property consultants Cushman & Wakefield last September suggesting that it was still the seventh most expensive retail thoroughfare in the UK in terms of annual rent per square foot. In the current economic and consumer spending climate, it’s got to be a pretty good vote of confidence to have new tenants lined up for the Collectables, Next and BHS units even before those stores have closed.

Primark fascia

MetroCentre’s empty Woolworths site is poised to get a new occupant, according to the mall’s majority owners, and is set to be trading by the middle of next year.

Capital Shopping Centres’ interim management statement for the period 1 July to 3 November 2010, released last week, reveals that “a major value fashion anchor is close to exchange in the former Woolworths store at MetroCentre, Gateshead, with a target opening of July 2011.”

It continues: “Along with the opening in September [2010] of the first combined TK Maxx/Homesense store [as blogged about here], this would enhance CSC’s anchor store strategy for the centre.”

Former Woolworths at MetroCentre (5 Oct 2009)

The news all but confirms the rumours that Primark is set to relocate from its single-storey Cameron Walk unit – formerly Littlewoods – to the enlarged Woolworths site in Garden Walk. In May, planners approved an application from The MetroCentre Partnership for a 17,405 sq ft extension to the unit, increasing its size, across two floors, to 60,000 sq ft.

This reconfigured unit is similar in size to the upcoming Next store, in the CSC-owned Eldon Square, which the statement also reveals is “on target for a December 2010 handover enabling an Easter 2011 retail opening.”

Assuming that the Primark move is confirmed – and there are few other retailers that would fit the bill of a “major value fashion anchor” – attention will surely turn to who might take over the freed-up Primark site. However, with the expanding Swedish retailer Clas Ohlson already trading or signed up in four of CSC’s 13 shopping centres – and planning to open, in the longer term, up to 200 UK shops – a MetroCentre unit of the right size and configuration could well be on its radar.

New and old logos

Last week’s news that the celebrated Wellworths store, in Dorchester, is being forced to change its name by Shop Direct reignites one of the most interesting threads to emerge from Woolworths’ collapse – the battle for the good bits of Woolies’ legacy.

The gist of this latest development is that Shop Direct – who, you’ll remember, bought the Woolworths brand from the administrators following the retailer’s collapse – was apparently content for Wellworths to keep its current name, provided that the business curtailed any expansion plans.

According to Wellworths’ statement, Shop Direct “initially supported the opening of the former Woolworths store in Dorchester as Wellworths, but then sought an agreement which would place limits on the growth of the business under the Wellworths name.”

It continues: “Regretfully, rather than accept those limits, Wellworths have decided to replace the Wellworths name with Wellchester over the course of the next two years.”

Wellworths store in Dorchester. Photograph by Nigel Mykura

Inevitably, the ‘well worth the money’ tagline will have to go too, with trade mark details on the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) website suggesting that it will be replaced with (the admittedly rather bland) ‘something for everyone.’ If one is being critical, it’s also fair to ask whether Wellchester – a name so obviously associated with the retailer’s place of origin – is the best brand for rolling out to other parts of the country. Still, the fact that the new name can still be abbreviated to ‘Wellies’ was surely part of the thinking behind it.

Screenshot of Shop Direct's Woolworths.co.uk site (2 Nov 2010)

No-one disputes that Shop Direct, like any other business, is entitled to protect its brand – but at what price? Time will tell whether the benefits of its actions outweigh what seems to be the overwhelmingly negative reaction from both the media and the public.

Writing on Twitter, for example, the editor of industry bible Retail Week remarked that “Shop Direct are idiots for making Wellworths change its name”, describing the move as “astonishingly petty.” His colleague, George MacDonald, agreed, branding the move “heavy-handed.”

Other Twitterers, such as dorset_flickr, voiced similar views, remarking how it was “interesting that such [a] big company feels so threatened by [a] name that isn’t [the] same – obviously Wellworths could go places.” Comments about Shop Direct’s actions on the Dorset Echo website have been similarly uncharitable, with the words “petty” and “heavy-handed” consistently used.

All this reaction matters, because these are the same people who will determine the success – or not – of Shop Direct’s own Woolworths.co.uk operation. Merely owning the Woolies name isn’t enough – Shop Direct needs to understand the heritage of the brand that it’s acquired, and to harness the goodwill that used to be associated with that name. Without that magic, the business is just Littlewoods with a different label.

Alworths fascia

Perhaps the nub of the issue is that Wellworths and the other fledgling ‘son of Woolies’ enterprises, such as Alworths and Smallworths, seem to have understand what people most liked about Woolies, and have embraced those cherished values of friendliness, warmth and convenience on the high street – values, indeed, that are challenging to replicate in an entirely online operation, however much pic ‘n’ mix you’re able to send out by City Link.

Instead of Shop Direct fighting battles for Woolies’ legacy – and Alworths MD, Andy Latham, is understandably coy about what the Wellworths decision might mean for his own chain – it could do worse than learn from the successes of its not-quite-namesakes.

Thank you to Nigel Mykura for the use of the photograph of Wellworths, which is © Copyright Nigel Mykura and licensed for re-use under the Creative Commons Licence.

Grey Street, Newcastle (16 Feb 2010)

Though Shambles in York has understandably garnered much of the attention for being named “Britain’s most picturesque street” in the Google Street View Awards, it’s a pleasure to see Newcastle’s Grey Street coming up in third place – if only for no other reason than giving me an excuse to use some nice nighttime shots that I took three weeks ago. 

Grey Street, Newcastle (16 Feb 2010)

From a retail point of view, Grey Street is something of an also-ran within Newcastle city centre – other than at the Grey’s Monument end, there are relatively few shops along the length of the street, with its mostly Tyneside Classical buildings occupied instead by a succession of banks, restaurants, bars, offices and estate agents. It wasn’t always like that – older readers will still remember when Binns department store (formerly Coxon’s) occupied what is now Earl Grey House (the building on the corner of Grey Street and Market Street that currently houses Costa Coffee), prior to moving into the adjacent former Bainbridge site in 1977.

Grey Street is, however, an undoubtedly beautiful and dramatic piece of townscape, already recognised by Radio 4 listeners, back in 2002, as “Britain’s best street”, and before that by Betjeman for its “descending subtle curve”.  

Grey Street, Newcastle (8 Mar 2010)

Perhaps the most prominent retail property on Grey Street today is that occupied since 2008 by Swedish fashion retailer H&M, supplementing the existing, 35,000 sq ft H&M branch that opened up in part of the former Littlewoods premises in Northumberland Street in 1999 – at the time, the largest H&M store in the UK.

H&M, Grey Street (8 March 2010)

The attractive, Grade II-listed H&M building – designed by William Henry Knowles and Thomas Ridley Milburn – dates from 1904, when the site was redeveloped for Mawson, Swan and Morgan, the “booksellers, stationers, printers and picture frame makers” founded in 1878. 

In 1986, following Mawson, Swan and Morgan’s closure, the premises were taken over by Waterstone’s, who remained there until 2007, closing their store as part of HMV Group’s revitalisation programme. It was something of a surprise that Waterstone’s chose not to retain its own original Newcastle store, but instead the nearby former Dillons store at Emerson Chambers, long ago rebranded following Waterstone’s merger with Dillons in 1999. More curious though is that Waterstone’s ran two stores within barely 100m of each other for quite as long as it did. 

One interesting fact, revealed by the Design, Access and Heritage Statement prepared at the time of H&M’s acquisition of the property’s lease, is the much later (1980s) origin of the ground to first floor staircase compared to the original 1904 staircase linking the ground floor and basement. This reflects the fact that the first floor was originally used as office rather than retail space (the clue being in its plainer mouldings and simpler detail compared to the building’s lower floors), accessed by a staircase elsewhere in the building. However, such is the sensitivity of the 1980s intervention, it’s difficult for an untrained eye to spot the join between the grand staircase’s two flights, despite them being constructed eighty years apart. 

'H&M' logo within window shields... (8 Mar 2010)

If anything, H&M’s takeover of the property allows more of the interior’s original features to be appreciated than was the case when the building was filled with bookcases. Equally, on the exterior, it’s pleasing that H&M has continued the tradition of the building’s occupant displaying its initials in the shields above the display windows of the beautiful Edwardian shopfront; just as Waterstone’s replaced ‘MSM’ with its own ‘W’, so H&M has – for the most part – inserted its familar red ‘H&M’ logo. 

...but not in this one (8 Mar 2010)

I’m always puzzled, however, as to why the shields at either end of the frontage have not had anything put inside them – I know that there are H&M logos on the fascia above instead, but the empty shields always niggle me as a detail that makes the design feel unfinished.

Signage as originally proposed (courtesy of John Cunnington Architects)

Perhaps it’s due to the original plans, above, envisaging internally illuminated hanging signs in those locations – presumably disallowed by the planners – which would have removed the need for either fascia- or shield-based logos on those particular parts of the facade?

Still, it would be nice to finish the job, ensuring that this high quality retail refurbishment can make an even more positive design contribution to the UK’s third most picturesque street.