Put the talk of empty units to one side; Cardiff’s new scheme is good news for retailers and for the city

The extension to Cardiff’s St David’s shopping centre opens on Thursday and will be the culmination of ten years’ work by the developers, Land Securities and Capital Shopping Centres.

Their timing is far from ideal. Letting the scheme hasn’t been easy and on opening only around 70% of the scheme by floorspace will be open.

That’s a big change from the past few years during which we’ve got used to shopping centres opening fully let, although its difficulties in letting have been mirrored by the Autumn’s other openings, notably in Aberdeen.

I was down in Cardiff last week and it’s actually a very good scheme, anchored by an outstanding John Lewis store which really pushes the envelope for the department store chain, notably on its fashion floors.

But there are plenty of other good names taking big stores in there, like New Look and H&M, while it looked like Hollister and Apple are setting up shop too, although the developers won’t confirm this.

Sure there’ll be carping from other developers, but the reality from the retailer point of view is that this autumn’s centre openings represent a great opportunity to get into good cities on terms they could only have dreamt of a few years ago.

They will also get the benefit of phases of openings, generating new waves of excitement in the run up to Christmas and again in the New Year.

So while it may not have been plain sailing, the letting difficulties Cardiff and Aberdeen have faced need to be put in perspective. Shopping centres are always going to be harder to let in bad markets, but they will let up over time and prove to be good additions to the cities they serve.