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Successful shopping centres all have one thing in common, according to retail planning consultant John Foreman of Army Bay – good planning.
He says that the ad hoc way in which retail centres are developed on the Coast does residents no favours and also impacts on the numbers of retailers who go out of business, leaving empty stores in their wake.
Recently Mr Foreman presented his ideas to the Hibiscus & Bays Local Board, offering to advise local business associations.
Although retail planning is his profession, Mr Foreman says as a local resident, his main motivation is to improve the quality of local retail precincts.
Mr Foreman has been a retail planner since 1964 – key projects he has worked on include interiors for the first St Lukes, Henderson Square and Shore City. Currently he is working on a shopping centre in Nelson Street in Auckland city.
Ideally, he says, the overall plan for any precinct should come from Council, but that ‘top down’ planning should be informed by information from the bottom up about what customers in a particular area need and want.
“Council should set the parameters for a chunk of land to be developed commercially,” he says. “Instead land has been divided up and sold to developers, who sell to investors and then shopkeepers. There is no overarching organisation to look at what the precinct should specialise in or make its point of focus. It results in confusion for shoppers, and their needs not being met. You end up with multiple landlords in any shopping centre who don’t care what type of business they have in their premises as long as the rent comes in.”
To get around this, he suggests good management operating across all the tenancies, with control over what types of businesses get space.
Local examples that could benefit from this approach, he says, include the newest retail blocks in Silverdale, including the Silverdale Centre and shops nearby in Millwater Parkway.
“They should have been better integrated into a cluster to provide a clear shopping destination (similar to a Westfield mall) and have been covered to provide all weather shopping,” Mr Foreman says.
Silverdale Village has its own atmosphere and Mr Foreman says if it continues to focus on its roots as a community hub, it will become a drawcard. He suggests a good use of the land by the public toilets in Silverdale Street that is expected to go on the market soon (known locally as ‘The Green’) would be a multi-storied development including apartments and shops/offices, but designed in a colonial style to work with the Village.
He says ideally bulk stores such as Pak ‘n’ Save and Bunnings could be linked to the Village by an enclave of cafés and restaurants along the river.
“There’s no such thing as too many restaurants and cafés,” he says.
An important principle for retail success, he says, is having a point of difference; for example Orewa could focus on fashion, eateries and beach-related businesses while The Silverdale Centre could become known more for homeware, hardware and computer/technology.
“When you specialise like that, you create a shopping destination.”
When it comes to The Plaza, Mr Foreman says that better integration with the shops known as the Top of the Plaza (where Eddie Law 100% is located) – including one roof over the whole area – would benefit retailers. He says shops that are too small can be a problem in malls and that if there were less shops, but larger, in The Plaza they’d be more attractive to anchor tenants.
