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?”

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.