United Kingdom
Revitalising a landmark building to regenerate marginalised retail space
Sheffield’s Grade II listed Co-op department store was once at the centre of the city’s retail offer. After falling into decline, the 80,000 sq ft (7,430 sq m) building closed its doors in 2008.
A decade later, following a £3m funding deal between the city council and regeneration company U+I, this once dilapidated but iconic building has a new lease of life.
At the heart of the developer’s ethos was the need to provide a catalyst for regeneration in the wider locality. Food hall Kommune attracts 7,000 visitors per week, while the Kollider Incubator, powered by Barclays Eagle Lab, is a flexible workspace designed to help businesses scale up quickly.
New operators have since moved into the area, and neighbouring buildings are now being refurbished for a variety of uses.
Australia
Repositioning a mall as a mixed-use scheme
Mall owners such as Vicinity and Scentre in Australia are converting their malls to offer more than just shopping. They are incorporating office, hotel, apartments, transport hubs and social services, such as childcare, senior care, medical, tertiary education and government services, as part of an ‘all of life lifestyle destination’.
Scentre Group, for example, is investing A$500m in the redevelopment of Melbourne’s Westfield Doncaster, incorporating 43,000 sq m of additional retail, 18,000 sq m of office space plus a health and wellness offering.
Meanwhile, Vicinity is enhancing The Glen, another Melbourne shopping centre, in a joint venture with Golden Age Group to fuse living, working, dining and shopping experiences in a development project worth A$500m. This includes creating 13,500 sq m of additional mall space, an enhanced leisure offer, 500 homes and offices, and a 4,000 sq m rooftop public realm project called Garden in the Sky.
United States
Rebuilding a large shopping mall into a new town centre
Denver, Colorado has seen the number of malls in the city reduce by 50% since 2005. One of those, the failed Cinderella Mall, has successfully been turned into the suburb CityCenter Englewood, the outcome of a long-term strategic urban renewal development. It now includes a city hall, 44,600 sq m of office and retail space, 440 apartments, medical centres, education facilities and a light-rail station. The new downtown has been a catalyst for growth and supports a local workforce of more than 25,000 people.
The USA is leading the way with repurposing dead retail space. More than 200 malls across the USA are being retrofitted or redeveloped, including into hospital or university campuses. Yet it is the conversion to large-scale strategic mixed-use sites that provides greatest insight into what the future may look like. For developers and local government it is an opportunity to rewrite the rule book on developing town centres. Several of these large mixed-use schemes are into their second decade.
Go to How to repurpose retail space to see how global investors and developers are tackling the issue of too much retail space with mixed-use regeneration
