Analysis: City prepares for one big new change

In just nine weeks, Land Securities will open the doors of a City office and retail scheme that has been likened in design to a stealth bomber.

On 28 October, the 550,000 sq ft, Jean Nouvel-designed One New Change, EC4, will introduce an unprecedented 220,000 sq ft of shops and restaurants to an area dominated by offices for the behemoths of banking and insurance.

In the run-up to Christmas, it will test, for the first time, whether the City can support a seven-days-a-week shopping centre.

For LandSec’s London port­folio retail manager, David Atcherley-Symes, it’s not about going head-to-head with the W1 stalwarts of Oxford Street and Bond Street , but rather about filling a gap in the Square Mile retail market.

“It’s not going to compete with the West End , but it will satisfy the demand for quality shopping in the City,” he says.

The scheme scored some early points in 2007, when it landed Sir Philip Green’s Topshop for its first store in the City of London in one of the four 25,000 sq ft prelet anchor units (2 June 2007, p42).

Prelets have continued in this vein, and the scheme’s retail element is now 96% let to around 60 high street names, including Hugo Boss, Guess, Marks & Spencer and Next. Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver will be among the restaurant operators opening in the new centre.

Mark Painter, retail associate director at DTZ, which is joint letting agent at One New Change, believes that setting out to attract high street names was the right strategy.

He explains that the perception that the City is all about luxury retailing is wrong, given that the majority of those who shop there are support staff and junior professionals in need of the brands they would otherwise have to find elsewhere.

“LandSec has been careful to ensure that the scheme is not focused on luxury retail, which is already well catered for in the City,” says Painter.

“Other retailers have shied away from the City because of the historic, five-day trading pattern.­ One New Change is challenging this by trading seven days a week, aided by its strategic location adjacent to St Paul’s and close to the Millennium Bridge.”

Richard Scott, Jones Lang LaSalle’s director of central London retail, feels that this tactic will encourage more retailers to take shops in the City. “One New Change has brought together a group of retailers that wouldn’t normally feature in the City,” he says.

“It will give them the belief that the City is a place to trade, invigorate the area and create a new dyn­amic for City retailing.”

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