As high streets and shopping centres grapple to halt declining footfall, the performance of retail parks is a different story.

The out-of-town locations have been the diamond in the retail rough for a number of months, bucking a wider trend of shopper numbers stuck in negative territory.

Back in July, overall footfall dropped 1.1% across the UK, but retail parks recorded a 3.1% increase in shopper numbers compared to the same time the previous year – their best growth since May 2014, according to the BRC-Springboard data.

But that growth, which came in the same month that shopping centre and high street footfall declined 2.5% and 2.2% respectively, was far from a flash in the pan.

Retail parks’ footfall jumped 2.9% in October on the back of a 4% rise the previous month – a figure that represented their best performance in almost two years.

Convenience

But as fewer shoppers opt to visit high streets and shopping centres, what exactly is driving them into retail parks?

Elliott's Field

Elliott’s Field

Elliott’s Field retail park in Rugby

Director of retail parks at developer and landlord Hammerson Andy Berger-North believes a “two-pronged” attack has won consumers from other locations.

“There are two aspects,” he tells Retail Week. “The first is their changing function and evolution to become increasingly important in the way people shop.

”A lot of retailers are using shopping parks to infill their store networks and they are serving a more convenient function compared to a city centre or regional shopping centre.

“But the rise in footfall is also driven by the resurgence of the housing market and the fact people are back to buying big-ticket items.

”Homeware retailers are having a pretty good time of it at the moment and there are lots of retailers in that category looking at a number of our schemes.”

British Land head of retail assets for Midlands and South West, Matt Reed, agrees that convenience has played a big part in the spike in retail park popularity in the UK.

“When you go to a park it doesn’t look like an industrial estate like they perhaps used to. There are more bins, benches and landscaping, so the public realm feels that bit better”

Matt Reed, British Land

“We’ve got quite a varied retail park portfolio – stretching from big shopping parks down to two or three units – but what people like about them is that you can park free in an accessible location,” he explains.

“That goes hand-in-glove with changing retailer habits. A lot of operators who sit in out-of-town locations, who will also have high street and shopping centre stores, will r-focus their click-and-collect model to suit the retail parks, dovetailing with the free car parking.

“That’s driven a lot of the underlying footfall growth, but as developers we have also invested in those assets. To a degree, that’s bridged the quality gap between a traditional out-of-town location and a shopping centre,” Reed adds.

“One strand of that is making sure the physical fabric of our assets is better, so when you go to a park it doesn’t look like an industrial estate like they perhaps used to. They are softer – there are more bins, benches and landscaping – so the public realm feels that bit better.

“But we’ve also been investing quite significantly in the leisure aspect. On our big shopping parks, the most recent examples of which are Glasgow Fort, Chester and Edinburgh, we have created leisure extensions anchored by cinemas with between four and eight restaurants. We’ve seen that drive considerable footfall growth.”

Investing in evolution

Reed says British Land has “masterplans” in place for several more of its larger assets to “strategically reposition” them in a similar way and create locations where shoppers will want to spend longer periods of time.

Hammerson is no different and has created what Berger-North calls the first of “a new type of shopping park” at Elliott’s Field, in Rugby, as a blueprint to keep footfall moving in the right direction.

“We want to make an attractive environment for customers. If you make it a great place to shop, people will keep coming back”

Andy Berger-North, Hammerson

“Retail parks have always been about convenience, but the experience is just as important,” Berger-North says – and that is clear from the design of its newly redeveloped asset.

Opti-white glass and cedar wood have been used to give the scheme a quality appearance, with stores benefitting from glazed double-height frontages that would look at home inside one of the landlord’s shopping centres.

The covered walkways are wider, creating a more comfortable experience for shoppers when moving from store to store, while also being raised and segregated from the 700-space car park.

Debenhams elliotts field

A management office sits at the heart of the 300,000 sq ft scheme, designed to offer “customer service, not just security.” Three full-time staff will patrol the car park and offer customers help with tasks such as taking shopping back to their cars.

Anchored by Debenhams, the scheme also boasts Fat Face’s first retail park store in England, with M&S, Next, River Island and TK Maxx also among the line-up.

The leisure offer includes restaurants Nando’s and Ed’s Diner, while a play area situated at the entrance to the scheme provides something for younger visitors to enjoy.

Berger-North dubs the changes an “evolution” that customers want. “We want to make an attractive environment for customers. If you make it a great place to shop, people will keep coming back and that’s what sold Elliott’s Field to retailers,” he says.

“Why shouldn’t we operate retail parks in the same way we operate our shopping centres? We’ve spent a lot of time designing this and, for us, this is as close as you can get to shopping centre quality in a retail park environment.”

Further footfall momentum

As retail parks continue to evolve in a bid to capitalise on changing consumer habits, Berger-North believes the growth in footfall will only gather further momentum.

“In the medium term, as shopping parks continue to evolve and more are completed, a lot more retailers will look to satisfy their expansion plans through retail parks,” he says.

“That’s a trend that will only continue on the better parks, where we are able to attract traditionally town centre and high street fashion operators who are looking to expand.

“We are building what are shopping destinations in their own right. When you overlay the right catering and leisure, that will increase the amount of customers attracted to those schemes. When you add the fundamentals of parks, in terms of their convenience and accessibility, it’s all there. They have a huge number of attributes that make them attractive places for retailers to expand into.”

“As shopping parks continue to evolve and more are completed, a lot more retailers will look to satisfy their expansion plans through retail parks.”

Andy Berger-North, Hammerson

Reed is confident that the retail park resurgence will “definitely continue”, and suggests they have a “big opportunity” to attract even higher shopper numbers.

“Retail parks dovetail so well with increasing multichannel shopping habits,” he observes. “If you look back maybe only five years ago there was a lot of fear in the market - ‘bricks and mortar is dead, the internet is going to take over’.

“Actually, what we’ve seen is that physical retailers have seen how the internet has taken hold and they have restructured their business to have an online platform but drive people through their shopfloors. Retail parks are ideally placed to take advantage of that.”

If that is the case, the story of the retail park’s outperformance could have more chapters still left to be told.