Typical Card Factory fascia

Newcastle City Council has recently received a planning application for the “display of internally illuminated fascia sign and non illuminated projecting sign to front elevation” for 55-57 Northumberland Street. The applicant, I understand, is the rapidly expanding greetings card chain Card Factory.

As far as I can tell, no retailer name is mentioned anywhere in the planning application, but a little bit of detective work soon reveals the ‘Applicant Address’ as Card Factory’s head office in Wakefield, and the ‘Applicant Name’ as the firm’s Property Administrator.

Only established in 1997, Card Factory has been one of the quiet retail successes of recent years. Following a combination of organic growth and acquisitions, the business has expanded to 490 stores nationwide, making it the second largest UK greetings card retailer after Clinton Cards.

Clinton Cards store in South Shields (18 Jun 2010)

Of the two, however, Card Factory has enjoyed the recent momentum, delivering year-on-year sales growth of 27% in 2009, and a £29.4m pre-tax profit on a turnover of nearly £168m. Clinton, in contrast, had to turn over £345m – double that of Card Factory – in order to generate a similar pre-tax profit (£24.1m). Just this April, Card Factory’s founders, Dean and Janet Hoyle, enjoyed a “multi-million pound windfall” after selling a £350m majority stake in the company to the London-based private equity firm Charterhouse.

Card Factory's South Shields store (18 Jun 2010)

Card Factory has already become an established presence in the North East, with Tyneside alone having branches in Gateshead, Blaydon, Wallsend, Jarrow, North Shields, South Shields and Whitley Bay. However, Northumberland Street will be the retailer’s first foray into Newcastle, and is certainly a bold choice for a chain that tends to be associated with the value end of the greetings card market.

Site of new Card Factory store in Newcastle (17 Jun 2010)

55-57 Northumberland Street, let’s not forget, is very much at the heart of what has traditionally been Newcastle’s prime retail pitch, sat between the Fenwick department store and the main Eldon Way entrance to Eldon Square. Previously Foot Locker, the unit became vacant as part of the reshuffle of Newcastle city centre retailers that has followed the opening of Eldon Square South. Republic, you’ll recall, kicked things off by moving from its previous store in Douglas Way to a new flagship in St Andrew’s Way, paving the way for Foot Locker to move into the more fashion-focused pitch freed up by Republic.

Northumberland Street entrance to Eldon Square (17 Jun 2010)

I like Card Factory – the prices are reasonable, and the quality and range excellent – and I certainly prefer its lively, unpretentious stores over the strangely soulless experience that I tend to find at Clinton’s. However, news of Card Factory’s planned Newcastle store does reinforce what seems to be Northumberland Street’s shift towards the value end of retail, coming hot on the heels of the new Peacocks store.

Peacocks, Monument Mall, Newcastle (11 Jun 2010)

To some extent, of course, this is merely a reflection of those retailers that are currently doing well and looking to expand. On the other hand, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to imagine top-end names opening up on Northumberland Street. When toy retailer Hamleys had its ill-fated foray into the provinces in the 1980s, it seemed natural for its Newcastle store to open up in Northumberland Street (in the premises now occupied by HMV). If it were doing the same today, you’d have to imagine it heading straight for St Andrew’s Way, and a berth among Apple Store, Guess, Hollister and All Saints.

The tide could yet, of course, shift back in Northumberland Street’s favour. The JD-owned branded fashion chain Bank is set to open in the nearby Priceless Shoes unit, and will surely be an improvement on the increasingly unappealing and tacky-looking store that’s there now. 

Next, Northumberland Street, Newcastle (5 Feb 2010)

The big test, however, will be on what occupies the unit that Next will leave empty when it moves into its new Eldon Square flagship. Received wisdom seems to be that the site represents the perfect opportunity for Zara to make a return to Northumberland Street, after its short-lived stint – in a unit that was too small for it – a few years ago.

In my view, Zara’s the kind of midmarket but well regarded retailer that Northumberland Street needs to attract if its to hang on to its status as Newcastle’s premier shopping thoroughfare. With Next due to move out early in 2011, it may not be very long before we know the answer.

Former Woolworths, Peterlee (12 March 2010)

Only counting the (33) North East Woolworths stores that closed down following the company’s 2008 administration, my quest to photograph the full set is nearing completion – with five more new ones featured in this post, only Berwick, Billingham and Stockton’s Portrack Lane are left to get.

However, the ever-expanding list of stores that had already closed down in previous years – currently standing at 17, of which 7 have been photographed – means that I’ll be kept busy touring the North East’s towns and suburbs for a little while yet.

First up, however, are a couple of revisits, with the old Gateshead Woolies store (#154) still determinedly empty.

Former Woolworths, Gateshead (12 March 2010)

Better news in Chester-le-Street though, where the old Woolies (store #267) had been taken over by B&M Bargains since my previous visit a couple of months earlier.

Former Woolworths (now B&M Bargains), Chester-le-Street (12 March 2010)

The first new stop is Stanley in County Durham, where Store Twenty One has done a good job of turning the old Woolies shop in Front Street (store #873) into a bright and appealing fashion and homewares store.

Former Woolworths (now Store Twenty One), Stanley (12 April 2010)

Less impressive is the company’s website - firstly for not having the Stanley shop listed in its store locator, and secondly for having the phrase “cheap clothes” within its title tags. To me, the words “cheap clothes” conjure up an unpleasant – and probably unfair – image of the retailer’s range being 100% driven by price at the expense of fashion. Indeed, using such language surely undermines the more effective “fashionably affordable” tagline that is used elsewhere on the site. Hopefully these issues will be addressed when the promised new site launches later this month.

Staying in County Durham, the 5,000 sq ft former Woolworths in Peterlee’s Yoden Way (store #987) was still empty when I visited in March, and as far as I know remains that way.

Former Woolworths, Peterlee (12 March 2010)

Though hardly the most beautiful building, that row of shops holds some historic significance as the first part of Peterlee new town to be built. The Francis Frith website features a rather quirky shot of the Yoden Way shops  surrounded by empty space – certainly a contrast to today’s busy and built up shopping centre. The Woolworths shop is easily recognisable in the old photograph by its distinctive, pale façade.

Former Woolworths, Newton Aycliffe (12 March 2010)

Down the road in Newton Aycliffe, we have another new town, another empty Woolies (store #1007), and another property that wouldn’t win any prizes for its looks.

On to Darlington next, where the formerWoolworths at 12-18 Northgate (store #28) was in the midst of building work to turn it into a new branch of Next. I understand that the Next store is not open yet, but is due to be finished later in the summer.

Former Woolworths, Darlington (12 March 2010)

Cornmill entrance to former Woolworths, Darlington (12 March 2010)

Finally to Spennymoor, and the old Woolies there (store #278) is one of many nationwide that has been taken over by The Original Factory Shop, the self-styled “low-price local department store”.

Former Woolworths (now The Original Factory Shop), Spennymoor (12 March 2010)

The chain has a policy of opening in smaller towns with limited non-food competition, and this is reflected in its choice of North East locations to date – among them Ashington, Crook, Prudhoe, Shildon and Stanley.

Interestingly, The Original Factory Shop’s own website indicates that a new store will be ‘opening soon’ in Morpeth, in Northumberland – I can’t find any further details yet, but presume that it will be in the former M&S Simply Food unit, vacated last year following the opening of a full M&S store in the new Sanderson Arcade.

No missing the fact that Peacocks is coming... (20 May 2010)

The opening of St Andrew’s Way back in February – and Hollister, belatedly, in April – may have been this year’s biggest retail events in Newcastle, but, three months on, there continue to be interesting and significant developments in fashion retail elsewhere in the city centre.

At Monument Mall, work is now well underway on the new Peacocks store, occupying the three-storey, 17,000 sq ft unit that formerly housed Zavvi, the Virgin Megastore, and before that Woolworths.

You can’t see anything happening inside from the ground floor of the Mall, or from Northumberland Street, as both frontages are boarded off. Rather, one of the most noticable things is that the Mall smells different to usual – of paint and wood, rather than Millies Cookies!

Northumberland Street frontage of new Peacocks store (20 May 2010)

However, go up or down a level and you can see right into the shop – shiny white tiled floors, escalators and stairs are all visible, with work looking well progressed ahead of the reported opening on 1 July. I’d have taken some pictures closer up, but there will still men in there working at 5:30, and I didn’t fancy being accosted for taking illicit snaps…

New Peacocks store from basement level of Monument Mall (20 May 2010)

Across town on the corner of Newgate Street and Blackett Street, work has also started on redeveloping the recently vacated Arcadia space into a new 55,000 sq ft Next store, which will be one of the fashion retailer’s largest stores in Britain when it opens early in 2011.

Site of new Next store in Newcastle (16 May 2010)

...and the same view back in January

Again, there’s not a great deal to see yet, but the Topman and Topshop signs have been taken down, the site screened off, and some mysterious holes punched into the brick façade facing Newgate Street.

As far as I’m aware, there’s no further news on which retailer might replace Next’s current shop on Northumberland Street, but there’s still plenty of time for details to emerge. One sure thing is that we’re likely to be seeing Newcastle’s fashion retailers playing musical shops for some time yet, as new units are carved out and existing ones freed up.

Debenhams, Eldon Square (16 Feb 2010). Photograph by Peter (aka 'Newcastle Historian')

I might have been busy at work at 10:30 a.m this morning, but many thousands of others evidently weren’t, judging from the crowds that attended the grand opening of St Andrew’s Way! Such was the excitement, Eldon Square was once again a trending topic on Twitter for much of today, while even the editor of industry bible Retail Week was there to see things first hand.

New Look, Eldon Square (16 Feb 2010)

Debenhams, Eldon Square (16 Feb 2010)

By the time I popped in to the new mall just after 5, things had calmed down somewhat, but there were still plenty of people having a good look around. I was able to get some better photos of the street frontages (using a proper camera this time), but thought better of getting any interior shots, given how many police officers were wandering about. However, Peter – aka ‘Newcastle Historian’ from the SkyscraperCity forums – has kindly let me plunder some of his own pics from inside the mall.

St Andrew's Way, Eldon Square (16 Feb 2010). Photograph by Peter (aka 'Newcastle Historian')

Clayton Street frontage, Eldon Square (16 Feb 2010)

First impressions are really positive – the inside of the mall is wide and bright, and the double height means that most of the retailers have created truly dramatic frontages. Debenhams’ looks great, Republic’s is as impressive as promised, and Apple’s is the bold statement that you would expect.

Best of the lot though must be Hollister. The store’s not yet open (and won’t be until April, apparently), but its shopfront is pure MetroCentre Mediterranean Village, circa 1986 – striking, kitschy, but totally on brand. It does mean that with most of the shop frontages being so flamboyant, Schuh’s – which would look very nice anywhere else – feels rather tame.

Apple Store, Eldon Square (16 Feb 2010). Photograph by Peter (aka 'Newcastle Historian')

Debenhams, Eldon Square (16 Feb 2010)

Tesco Metro, Eldon Square (16 Feb 2010)

Clayton Street frontage to Eldon Square (16 Feb 2010)

Poundland, Eldon Square (16 Feb 2010)

As I’ve remarked before, a successful Tesco store probably does not bode well for the nearby Co-op food hall. However, there can surely be no better opportunity than now for the whole of the former Co-op department store building to be brought back into use. Just looking at all the people busying around in Newgate Street this evening, it really is now a great pitch, directly opposite Debenhams. If Harvey Nichols ever made up its mind to come to Newcastle, it need surely look no further for a stunning landmark property in a fantastic, prime location.

Former Co-op department store, Newgate Street (16 Feb 2010)

I also had a look around the older parts of Eldon Square, where there are now various voids from retailers moving into the new part of the shopping centre. However, these vacated units have all been screened off already – complete with ‘exciting new retailer coming soon’ banners – so merely look blank and dark rather than obviously empty. On the other hand, the existing Poundland in the old post office premises and the current All Saints in Market Street were both still happily trading when I walked past this evening, suggesting that those stores will be retained alongside their brand new Eldon Square siblings.

All Saints, Eldon Square (16 Feb 2010). Photograph by Peter (aka 'Newcastle Historian')

I read this morning that five of the six now-empty sites in Eldon Square have new occupants lined up, which is very good news if true. Certainly, the banner at the former Arcadia site promises a ‘new flagship retailer’ soon – almost certainly Next. Meanwhile, at least part of the site of the former Republic store is going to be Foot Locker, presumably moving from its existing Northumberland Street site. So, tick this off as yet another seemingly un-Woolies-related blog post that in fact has a faintly obscure Woolworths link…

Next, Northumberland Street, Newcastle (5 Feb 2010)

Following the apparent confirmation of earlier rumours about Next planning to open a new store in Newcastle’s Eldon Square shopping centre next year, it seems timely to take a look at the retailer’s current Northumberland Street premises, shown above.

It’s quite a handsome building when you stand back and look at it – particularly in comparison to the brutish, blank, brown brick facades of the Primark (formerly C&A) and Bhs building next door. Imagine then how things might look if a building in the style of Next’s premises wrapped all the way round the corner into Northumberland Road, in place of the existing Bhs/Primark block… something like the view below, perhaps?

Old postcard of Bhs site, Northumberland Street, Newcastle

Perhaps I should have known already, but before getting a copy of the fascinating new Newcastle Through Time book for Christmas, I hadn’t a clue that today’s Next building is a retained fragment of the building above - the remainder of which was demolished in the early 1970s to make way for more modern premises for the then ‘British Home Stores’ and C&A. I’m none the wiser, however, about which retailer was occupying the Next site at that time, or indeed what the reason was for retaining those three last bays. Perhaps someone out there can shed some light on the matter?

The same view today

One thing I do know is that the story has a neat, if slightly tenuous, link to a building mentioned briefly in one of my first blog posts – Murton House, in Grainger Street. Having housed the Henry A Murton department store from about 1910 until its takeover by the Co-op in 1957, the Co-op made substantial changes to the interior in the 1960s, before moving out of the premises in 1971. Conveniently, C&A was able to take the property over after only a short period of vacancy, occupying the building until 1973 while its regular premises in Northumberland Street were demolished and rebuilt.

Similarly, British Home Stores apparently moved to Pilgrim Street during the redevelopment of the site – again, answers on a postcard if you have any information on where exactly that was.

Existing Topshop, Newcastle

Back in the present, we do now know a little more, courtesy of The Journal, about the proposed new Next store in Eldon Square. It will:

• Reportedly be “one of the largest branches of Next in the country”
• Supposedly replace, rather than supplement, Next’s existing Northumberland Street store (handily freeing up a prominent unit for somebody else – perhaps Zara?)
• Take over a small amount of space occupied by Eldon Leisure in order to create space for a “flagship store”.

The fact that Next will be nibbling into Eldon Leisure seems to reinforce the view that its intended location must be the current Arcadia Group space, presumably incorporating three floors - the street and mall levels (current Topshop), and the floor accessed by escalators from the mall that currently houses Topman (and, if I understand correctly, the adjacent bit of Eldon Leisure).

This space equates to the whole of the brown-brick block shown in the photo above. However, with a reported £8m redevelopment budget, it has to be hoped that something creative can be done to get rid of those blank and lifeless façades – either by building out into the open space between it and the new St Andrew’s Way (the redbrick section to the right of the shot), or by punching some more openings into what is currently there.

Peacocks logo

Peacocks has submitted a planning application for new signage at the former Zavvi site in Newcastle’s Northumberland Street, confirming recent rumours that the fashion retailer was being lined up to occupy the 17,000 sq ft store.

Published today, the application (2010/0159/01/ADV) is for the “display of internally illuminated fascia sign, internally illuminated projecting sign and non illuminated banner sign to Northumberland Street elevation and black vinyl graphic to windows on Northumberland Street and Brunswick Place elevation”. An accompanying application – 2010/0160/01/DET – has been submitted for the “installation of new shopfront and replacement of air conditioning units to roof”.

Former Zavvi, Newcastle (27 Sep 2009)

Very few changes to the unit itself are envisaged – the application states that Peacocks will occupy the existing three trading levels (basement, ground and first floor), and will retain all the existing links between the store and Monument Mall. In a previous blog post, back in August, I wrote that “one of Zavvi’s strengths was having entrances/exits on all three shopping levels of Monument Mall, as well as to Northumberland Street, helping shoppers permeate throughout”. The retention of all these routes in and out of the new Peacocks store will undoubtedly provide a footfall boost to Monument Mall’s other retailers, across all of the shopping centre’s three main levels.

Looking beyond Monument Mall, and the obvious fact that a large empty unit will be brought back into use, Peacocks’ arrival can only be good news for Newcastle city centre. Though it may have had a less fashionable image in the past, today’s Peacocks is a highly popular and successful retailer – it now has over 500 UK stores, with plans to open 40 more in 2010-11, and reported like-for-like sales growth of 8% in the eight weeks up to 2 January, a significantly better figure than Next (3.2%) or M&S (1.2%). It’s newer stores – such as North East branches opened in Chester-le-Street, Seaham and Gateshead in the last year or two – are smart and attractive, with bright and interesting frontages that enliven the street scene. Peacocks’ arrival at Monument Mall can undoubtedly be seen as a vote of confidence in Newcastle city centre from a thriving retailer that has not previously had a presence here.

Existing Peacocks store in Gateshead

Above all, we can celebrate the fact that we’re getting a Peacocks instead of another branch of Barclays Bank – an idea that seems even more crazy now that the former Zavvi site’s continued viability as a large, three-storey retail unit has been so clearly demonstrated.

Thanks to TownPlanningNE at SkyscraperCity’s Newcastle City Centre Retail forum for the tip-off regarding the planning application!

Debenhams, Eldon Square South

A few interesting titbits of Newcastle retail news ahead of the opening of Eldon Square South – St Andrew’s Way – on 16 February. Anchored by a new Debenhams store, Eldon Square South is of interest beyond Tyneside as one of only a handful of major retail developments to be opening in the UK during 2010. 

I recently blogged about Abercrombie & Fitch’s sister brand Hollister having Meadowhall and the Trafford Centre as its “most northerly outposts”. Now it seems that we’re going to be getting our own Hollister in Eldon Square, meaning that the shopping centre’s extension will – impressively – be fully let when it opens next month. 

In an earlier post about Eldon Square’s extension, I noted that “the real test… will be ensuring that the large and prominent units being vacated by New Look, River Island, Topshop, et al do not stay empty for long”. The word at SkyscraperCity is that Next is going to be taking over the soon-to-be-former Topshop/Topman site, though it’s not yet clear whether this will be in addition or instead of the retailer’s existing Northumberland Street store. The existing Next store is very cramped, but given that it had an interior makeover not too long ago my guess is that it will be retained alongside the new store. Either way, I hope something will be done to improve the current Topshop/Topman unit’s ugly brick walls, which present such a blank and unappealing face onto Blackett and Newgate Streets.

Existing Topshop, Newcastle

We’ve known for some time that Tesco Metro is coming to the Eldon Square extension; now it seems that a Tesco Express is opening up at nearby Eldon Garden as well. That begins to explain the Sony Centre’s move into one floor of the former Pier store, freeing up the prominent unit facing Percy Street for Tesco. It still seems curious, however, that having had no city centre Tesco store until now, there will soon be two within a few hundred metres of each other.

Equally, with M&S, Waitrose, Sainsbury’s Local, Tesco Metro, Tesco Express and The Co-operative Food all operating in the Percy Street / Newgate Street area, it will be interesting to see whether all of them are able to thrive. When I walked by last week, ‘Store Closed’ signs in the windows indicated that the Food Co supermarket in the soon-to-be-redeveloped Newgate Centre had already succumbed.

Food Co, Newgate Street, Newcastle (11 Jan 2010)

Expect more musical shops over the coming months as, with the opening of Eldon Square South, Newcastle city centre adapts to the biggest geographical shift in its retail focus for more than thirty years. Interesting times!

Millets store

Today’s retail news has arguably been dominated by Marks and Spencer revealing better than expected results, and Blacks Leisure (owner of Millets, as well as its eponymous chain) announcing plans to shut 89 stores that “have not traded profitably for many years” (in which case, you may wonder why the company has persevered with those branches as long as it has – Woolworths’ demise surely demonstrates the potential for ropey stores to bring the profitable ones crashing down with them).

While established names link M&S and Blacks display mixed fortunes in their quest for future success, one of today’s other (less prominent but no less interesting) retail stories relates to a brand new presence on the high street – GIVe, the latest venture from fashion guru George Davies of Next, George at Asda and Per Una fame.

Following months of anticipation, GIVe’s Regent Street flagship has opened today, with 21 other shops – five standalone stores and 16 department store concessions – following tomorrow. Alongside London, the standalone GIVe stores are in all the top shopping centre locations that you would expect – Bluewater, Cribbs Causeway, Kingston-upon-Thames, Liverpool One, Meadowhall – with Glasgow and Harrogate following soon.

Unusually, the concessions are all located within independent department stores, including all 11 Beales sites – a refreshing change from the usual House of Frasers and Debenhams. This decision, reportedly, is linked to Davies’ wish to offer a free minor alterations service within all his GIVe shops, as well as his desire for a less corporate, more boutiquey feel – hence the sense in tying up with department stores that already provide this type of personal, customer-focused service.

Several observations can be made about the store portfolio. Most obvious, from a North East viewpoint, is the absence as yet of any GIVe stores in our region. Perhaps we shouldn’t worry – after all, there’s no GIVe store to date in Manchester, Leeds or Edinburgh either. However, compared to other major regional shopping centres, such as Bluewater and Cribbs Causeway, I do wonder sometimes about MetroCentre’s ability to attract and retain the top names – take for example the oft-cited departure of Gap and its replacement with Peacocks.

Don’t get me wrong - Peacocks is a great shop – but it’s ubiquity means that it’s not really a special shop. For me, a special shop can still be part of a retail chain, but it needs to be one that has few enough stores to make each one a real destination – shops like the John Lewis’s, Fenwicks, Selfridges, Apple Stores and Lego Stores of this world. Other than the Berghaus flagship, it’s difficult to think of stores in MetroCentre that would fit this definition. Is it a function of the existing retail mix? The fact that the 22-year-old MetroCentre, with the exception of the Red Mall extension, looks rather cheap and dated compared to its newer competitors? Or something else? 

Certainly, Apple Store’s important decision to open up in Newcastle’s Eldon Square extension (blogged about here), alongside a growing roster of big-name fashion retailers, may help give Eldon Square the edge as the most likely location for GIVe’s North East debut. Alternatively, Rutherfords in Morpeth (mentioned here) or Robbs in Hexham would be obvious candidates, were GIVe to go down the concessions route.

Another observation about GIVe’s store portfolio is quite what a coup – and potential boost – this is for Beales, whose recent performance has been patchy to say the least. Assuming that GIVe is a success, Beales is sure to reap some benefit in terms of both footfall and trade. If nothing else, it will help to make its sometimes tired-looking stores more of a retail destination again.

GIVe homepage

 Inevitably, a blog post like this would not be complete without me passing comment on GIVe’s online presence. I’m hardly qualified to comment on the women’s fashions themselves, but the good quality photographs are really effective, and I like how the clothes can be browsed by colour as well as garment type. The ‘style with’ tips – suggesting belts or bags to go with your top – also seem like a canny move. If nothing else, Davies’ ability to launch a high street retail chain and fully operational online store on the same day is pretty impressive. Recognising the synergies between bricks and clicks, the site – unlike others I could mention - also gets brownie points for featuring a list of GIVe store locations, complete with opening times, contact details, and the name of the store manager.

Any obvious website downsides? None especially, other than the predominant black and white look making the GIVe site resemble any number of other fashion retailers’ – House of Fraser or the aforementioned Tucci, to name just two. As always, if you’ve surfed the GIVe website – or indeed visited one of the high street stores – feel free to share your own reactions to the GIVe experience.

Back of the WHSmith store in Redcar (17 Sep 2009)

Visiting Redcar today, I was amused to spot a little throwback to the past in the form of an old WHSmith fascia, featuring the once familiar cube of ‘W’, ‘H’ and ‘S’ letters. 

Curiously, the main frontage of the store in Redcar High Street features the more up-to-date blue fascia with white text (below), but someone has either forgotten to update the goods entrance or decided that it really isn’t terribly important. 

The more commonly seen WHSmith logo these days

It must be about a decade since I last saw the old logo featured on a WHSmith store, though – I remember it being on the old Eldon Square branch in Newcastle, before that closed and business moved to the shiny new branch on the old Littlewoods site in Northumberland Street. Needless to say, readers, it would be fun to hear of any other places that you know of where the former logo is still in situ. 

It is interesting, though, how a logo that looks fairly innocuous at the point of being retired begins to look rather quaint and dated once you’ve got so used to its replacement. Redcar aside, however, WHSmith seems to have done a pretty good job of rolling its new logo out over the years – and that is important. 

Current WHSmith signage, on a typical store

If you’re a retailer going for a new visual identity, with all the brand values and sense of change that that espouses, it needs to be comprehensively and consistently applied – as House of Fraser has recently done. In contrast, retailers such as Matalan, Next and M&S have all been rather slow at applying their new visual identities to existing stores; the risk is that it creates and communicates a two-tier estate – those most important stores that are evidently worthy of rebranding; and those lower in the pecking order that seemingly aren’t so worth investing in.

Newcastle's Zavvi store in happier times. Photograph by Mankind 2k

When I remarked a couple of weeks ago that Newcastle’s “Monument Mall would surely welcome the arrival of a strong anchor store” following the closure of Zavvi, a potential new branch of Barclays Bank was not exactly what I had envisaged.

Today’s Journal reports that “some members of Newcastle’s commercial property community have expressed dismay at the potential move”, and no wonder – the idea of the prime Northumberland Street site being lost to retail use is a crazy one.

Over the years, The Journal’s commercial property section has repeatedly cited the problem of big-name retailers who want to move to Newcastle not being able to find units of the size and quality that they require. This, indeed, has also been mentioned as the logic behind Eldon Square’s current redevelopment, where two-storey, modern units are being created. Against this backdrop, it certainly seems bizarre to take a 17,000 sq ft, three-storey unit out of the city’s retail equation.

It’s hard too to see how filling one of Monument Mall’s most prominent units with a bank will do very much to invigorate the rest of the mall. One of Zavvi’s strengths was having entrances/exits on all three shopping levels of Monument Mall, as well as to Northumberland Street, helping shoppers permeate throughout. It would seem unlikely, however, that Barclays would wish to keep so many entrances, or indeed even make public use of all three floors.

Even Northumberland Street – though in reasonably fine fettle, anchored as it is by the stalwarts of Fenwick, M&S, Bhs, Primark, Next and H&M – would surely benefit from something different to the banks, phone shops and coffee shops that have mushroomed along its length in recent years.

A separate issue is what would happen to Barclays’ existing city centre branches assuming, as The Journal notes, that any planning application to change the old Zavvi’s use from A1 (retailing) to A2 (financial services) was successful (something that is not guaranteed). While other banks have scaled back their city centre presence in recent years, Barclays still has four branches in relatively close proximity to each other – at the top end of Northumberland Street; on the corner of Percy Street and Gallowgate; in Grainger Street, next to Central Arcade; and the rebranded Woolwich opposite the old Odeon in Pilgrim Street (I don’t think I’ve missed any others). It seems highly unlikely that all of these would be retained in addition to the proposed new branch, but none are really in top-notch retail locations – perhaps part of the rationale for Barclays seeking a more central site.

If this were the case, Barclays’ move would mirror that of HSBC a few years ago, where several Newcastle city centre branches were closed and their operations consolidated into a new Grey Street flagship. The difference, though, is that HSBC’s move didn’t result in the loss of an existing retail site, given that the premises it moved into had previously housed branches of Pizza Hut and TSB.

As always, your thoughts and reactions are welcome. Most obviously, what retail name would you like to see moving into Newcastle’s old Zavvi store? Or, perhaps, are you excited at the prospect of a new shiny branch of Barclays?

Update: That’s neat! Impressed that Google has not only picked up this blog post within an hour of me publishing it, but that it shows up higher in the search results for ‘zavvi barclays newcastle’ than the Journal article that prompted it :)

Thank you to Mankind 2k for the use of his photograph of Newcastle’s old Zavvi store, which is © Copyright Mankind 2k and licensed for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence.