The new shopping centre: Destinations to 'eat, work, live, play' ... oh, and shop
Into the future: An artist's impression of a Sydney shopping centre. Picture: File
Into the future: An artist's impression of a Sydney shopping centre. Picture
- New shopping centres not just about shops
- Bars, restaurants, entertainment, apartments
- Diversify or die for old-school shopping malls
MOVE over Maccas in the food court and C-grade celeb appearances. Shopping centres are going upmarket, turning to fine dining and live shows to lure customers back.
And in the future, it'll be the norm to work, live and party in your shopping mall.
That's the prediction from international shopping centre guru Bruce Shaw, who says the online retail age is driving shopping centres to reinvent themselves, adding bars, gourmet restaurants and more live entertainment to attract customers.
Mr Shaw, the managing director of architecture and interior design company Buchan Group, has long been at the cutting edge of shopping mall trends, having been on the development team for London’s first Westfield shopping centre and Sydney’s Chatswood Chase.
'Eat, work, live, play' (and shop)
“A lot of things have been added with hotels, residential and office space so they’re going to become more a mixture of eat, work, live, play destinations,” Mr Shaw told news.com.au.
While the first mega malls were built to be shopping destinations, entertainment and food outlets could be their saving grace, with the retail industry still reeling from a drop in sales since the global financial crisis.
Hard hit hard by the rise in online shopping, with a high Aussie dollar encouraging shoppers to buy cheaper goods on overseas websites, malls are being driven to reinvent themselves.
This week's closure of 42 Angus & Robertson book stores nationwide, following Borders’ collapse, even prompted Small Business Minister Nick Sherry to warn that book chains, threatened by e-tailer giants like Amazon.com would disappear from the market within five years’ time.
Love to shop? Live in a mall ...
Apartments and offices, which in recent years have been built closer to shopping centres, will also increasingly be found in the same building, Mr Shaw said.
“The planning schemes are really driving that trend because it makes sense to have shopping centres in activity centres,” he said.
“The opportunity is there in developing residential entertainment centres, it makes sense in terms of where people want to live, (with growing demand from) Asian communities where people have for a long time lived in higher density accommodation with retail service and entertainment at their doorsteps.”
US shopping malls become ghost towns
The trend echoes that of US shopping malls, which have turned to “feederies” - eateries and themed restaurants - to keep customers from straying.
There, not only are book chains closing, DVD stores and smaller fashion boutiques have been replaced by big box discount stores, said University of Canberra professor Lisa Scharoun.
“In the US you can see entire dead shopping malls – completely vacant, or struggling on with one or two department stores,” she said.
“In Canberra you can see the same thing happening with Costco - which has a similar structure to Walmart - replacing a huge outlet centre called Brand Depot.”
But Professor Scharoun said major fashion outlets would survive the rise in online shopping, she said.
“It’s mainly anything that you can buy online that you don’t need to touch (that will die out), things like books and videos, which you don’t need to look at before you buy.”
Remember Venture, Franklins?
A number of analysts have warned the traditional shopping centre was under threat as retailers struggle to keep paying high rental rates – Sydney’s are the third highest in the world behind shopping capitals New York and Hong Kong.
Australian Retailers’ Association executive director Russell Zimmerman said businesses may downsize their store fronts and become showrooms that display wares that are later bought online to save costs.
“Retailers have gone into almost every shopping centre in the past, but they will now re-evaluate those decisions and look at what’s profitable … they will start looking more closely at where and how they’ll position themselves and their business long term,” he said.
But Mr Shaw said that as retailers die off, shopping centres will live on, having survived decades of changing retail trends, citing defunct discount store Venture and supermarket chain Franklins as examples of businesses that disappeared from malls during the 1990s recession.
“It’s a cycle, the way retail works, it’s a very volatile business and while we’re hearing about change in terms of way people buy and read books, which is certainly affecting that part niche of retail it’s not necessarily going to affect a large proportion of the retail marketplace,” he said.
Mr Shaw predicts more international fashion retailers like Zara will enter the market to fill the gap left by Colorado, which this week also closed 140 of its stores across Australia after failing to find a buyer.
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