The expanded St David’s is bringing a wonderful selection of new stores, cafes, bars, restaurants and luxury residential apartments to the heart of Cardiff, as well as enhanced public areas and facilities, a new central library and the modernisation of the existing St David’s Shopping Centre. The development represents a £675M investment in the city and encompasses not only the construction of new retail, but also several sub-projects including over 300 apartments, improvements to the public realm and the largest John Lewis department store outside London.

The project, undertaken by St David’s Partnership, a joint venture between Land Securities and Capital Shopping Centres, is expected to have created 4,000 permanent new retail jobs and 1,000 construction jobs upon completion. Anchor retailer John Lewis, which opened to the public in September, states that it has brought 780 partners to the city, 725 of whom had been recruited locally, the scheme has an extensive catchment and an available spend around Cardiff of £9.5bn.

St David’s Partnership has certainly delivered on the vision at St David’s, but how has the partnership succeeded in areas such as long-term interest from and sustained relationships with retailers and stakeholders in Cardiff?

“The importance of the partnership is that from day one we really got into the community, both companies having invested significantly in the city for over 30 years,” says Capital Shopping Centres Property Director, Caroline Kirby. “We see Cardiff as a long-term investment city for the partnership and have worked with the local authority to build and grow those relationships over time.

“We have been building shopping centres for over 40 years and whilst we have seen a number of retail fascias come and go, working with some of the core brands and the core retailers has been the bedrock of our company – and remains so.

“We have certainly worked hard to maintain long-term retailer relationships, such as those with the John Lewis Partnership,” she continues, “and this has been incredibly important to us.”

“It is all about getting the right retailer in the right space with the right adjacency, and absolutely at the right time,” explains Joanne Skilton, Retail & Leasing Director at Capital Shopping Centres. “This is how we successfully develop our retail mix, by focusing on who the customer is, establishing their wants and needs, and delivering on that through the retail relationships that we have.”

There are a lot of new retailers at St David’s, not only to Cardiff but to Wales as well. “This is something that is really important in delivering a scheme like St David’s,” Skilton says. “We must seek to enhance the existing retail and to develop the overall offer, providing consumers with more choice. “What both Capital Shopping Centres and Land Securities do particularly well is focus not just on the big, UK retailers and international brands, but also on local points of difference.”

Cardiff as a retail destination is fantastic, with the right catchment, the right population and the right tourist numbers, but it has not had a modern, state-of-the-art shopping centre for a very long time and consumers have never been given the choice that they now enjoy. “It is wonderful to be able to provide the space for a flagship for some of these retailers, as it may have been another 5-10 years for that space to be put together on a standard high street,” says Kirby.

In addition to the hugely impressive retail element, St David’s also provides an exciting quality food and beverage offer that has been designed very much as a part of the scheme, as opposed to being ancillary to it.

It has been very important to St David’s Partnership that the F&B element was not looked at in isolation and the team has worked very hard to differentiate, spending a lot of time looking at the design of the food area to fashion a ‘different’, softer feel.

For the full article please see the RLI November 09 issue