How do you ensure that a shopping centre is a success?
At Moorgarth we believe one of the most critical factors is a strong connection to the local community. This means involving local people from as early as the planning stage and ensuring you never lose touch once a centre is up and running.
For us, it all starts with listening and understanding. What do local people want? How do they feel about their town and what it offers? What are their concerns? We reach out to local leaders, the business community, local charities, schools, colleges and universities. We attend local events. We might get out on the street and talk to people, gathering insights through primary research. Immersing ourselves in the community becomes our priority.
The insights we gather provide us with essential information for our planning phase. It helps us to decide on the perfect mix of different retail, food and leisure and what will complement the other offerings in an area. It also helps us to define the sort of personality we want our centre to have. We want locals to feel proud of their centre by creating a place they want to spend time shopping, enjoying a meal and having fun. Destinations that entice teenagers off their screens and give families and friends a local place to meet.
We create a sense of community amongst our tenants too, through forums, joint initiatives and social events. All of this makes for a great atmosphere where people want to spend time.
Take Broad Street Mall, our shopping centre in Reading. This has completely transformed what was a tired and lifeless part of the city into a vibrant meeting place with shops and restaurants spilling out onto the street. We have a great local charity running family art classes, creative writing and ‘knit nights’. We’ve organised a Christmas light switch on, something we felt the community was missing out on and this year’s Pride March started at our centre. It’s truly become the hub of the community.
Our Bolton Market centre has become the temporary home of Bolton theatre while its own building is being refurbished and there’s always lots of interesting events on offer here. Right now we have family floristry workshops, coding education courses and a group of over 60s who are learning the guitar. The people of Bolton see this centre as their own. It’s made the town a better place.
Like Mary Portas, we believe
“the demise of high street shops isn't that they are victims of the internet but that they've simply failed to put what real people want at the heart of their business models.”
We see this tough retail market as an opportunity to stand out, to innovate and to forge strong connections with our local communities. We are always on our toes, continuously adapting to ensure we stay relevant and don’t become complacent. We don’t want to be a faceless landlord, we want to be part of these communities too, making a positive contribution to their cities and towns.
