There is still novelty out there, but it does mean heading to east London

Had the Cook’s tour of the forthcoming Westfield Stratford in east London last week and first impressions are positive. If you happen to buy a ticket to watch one of the 20-something sports that will be taking place nearby next year, entering the complex will be almost de rigeur and probably pretty exciting.
But this vast shopping city will be open long before that and it’s possible to reach it via the high-speed link from St Pancras in less than 10 minutes (albeit for a hefty £7.30 off-peak return). If you don’t fancy driving out there, it’ll be almost worth the train fare as what awaits is one of the more interesting retail experiences the UK has to offer.
The scheme follows the ‘town’, rather than covered mall format, with ‘streets’ through its various parts that will be filled with public art including a “digital fountain”, which does sound novel. The really noteworthy part however will be the selection of retailers that Westfield has managed to get to sign on the dotted line.
Your correspondent was told not to talk about the new formats and names that were on view in the interior last week, so I won’t, but suffice it to say that there will be a few surprises, as well as the usual suspects. More to the point although this will no doubt be an ‘aspirational’ location from which to trade, it does look worth it in terms of the quality of the design of the public areas.
Last time round, when Westfield opened in White City in 2008, it took a good few months for it to bed down and a fair number of tenant changes were apparent. Visit the place today however and you are confronted by a state of the art mall that really does make visiting a shopping centre seem close to being a pleasure.
It also seems likely that once the London 2012 hullabaloo is over it may be a while before this one establishes itself in the popular imagination, but at a time when so relatively little is being done on the new shopping centre front, it’s good to see action.
Westfield Stratford opens in September and the scheme’s many units are handed over to the retailers to be internally designed and shopfitted in a couple of weeks. Doubtless there will be the usual scramble to get this one completed, but it does look as if it will have been worth the effort. Oh yes, that and the roughly £1.5bn spent on its creation.