Grand design
Published: 22 June, 2006
Cambridge is about to see its first significant city centre retail development for three decades, as the massive Grand Arcade development begins to take shape.
At the moment three large tower cranes jostle for attention with the gothic spires of the city's colleges and churches. But in less than two years the city will have its first modern shopping mall, providing 450,000 sq ft of retail anchored by a 280,000-sq ft John Lewis store.
Lawrence Chadwick, retail projects director at Grosvenor, has worked in Cambridge for the past 20 years on the abortive scheme for a regional out-of-town mall at Duxford and on the various phases of the Grafton Centre. He explains that a number of factors triggered the Grand Arcade project.
"John Lewis's leases were falling in, and the old Robert Sayle store suffered from a poor trading environment," he says. "If the city had not been able to find a city centre solution for them they would have gone out of town."
The original proposal, drawn up by Shearer Property Group, was to develop a new store fronting St Andrew's Street while John Lewis continued to trade from its old premises. Then John Lewis would take possession of the new store and the mall development would begin on the old site. While it guaranteed John Lewis business continuity, this two-phase approach stretched the development period to an unrealistically long five years.
Grosvenor was initially brought in by USS, the scheme's financial backer, to carry out an audit of the development process, but Chadwick quickly realised that the company's extensive landholdings in the city were the key to streamlining the project.
The solution was to decant John Lewis to a temporary store on Burleigh Street, next to the Grafton Centre, allowing Grand Arcade to be developed in a single phase, slashing the construction period to three years.
Even though the Burleigh Street site only offered 60,000 sq ft of trading space, JLP bought into the solution, and is maximising its trading opportunities by setting up an innovative white goods department and pick-up point on the park & ride site at Trumpington.
The city's magistrates courts have also been relocated to a temporary facility at Trumpington before relocating back to a new facility above the Grand Arcade mall.
Grosvenor developed the site at Trumpington as part of the Section 106 agreement. Initially it had 1,000 car spaces but due to demand this is being extended to 1,500 spaces.
On the main site construction is now well advanced with the anchor store and the multi-storey car park up to their full height. However, Chadwick concedes that the project has not been without its setbacks. The site is next to Cambridge's main telephone exchange, and all of the city's phone lines had to be diverted before site works could begin. And digging a big hole in the middle of a mediaeval city has attracted the archaeologists.
One of the city's biggest-ever digs has resulted in the discovery of the King's Ditch - a fortified earthwork that once encircled the city centre. The developers and contractors have made a virtue of necessity by holding an on-site exhibition, allowing the public to view the archaeologists at work.
For various reasons the construction project - being carried out by Bovis Lend Lease - has become a model for green construction and only 2 per cent of construction waste is going to landfill. Noise and vibration is also a big issue because the site is opposite the University's examination halls. Sound monitors bring all work to a halt if noise at the site boundary exceeds 75db, and so far the project has stayed well within this tolerance.
A further complication has been the need to maintain an access road right through the middle of the site, because this is the only way for lorries to reach Lion Yard's service bay.
In large part due to the flexibility of the construction programme, the project is on schedule for the John Lewis store to open in November 2007, with the mall following in March 2008.
With that in mind, marketing of the mall units is now beginning. Chadwick is confident that the scheme will be well-received by the retailer community. "Cambridge has a fast-growing and affluent population, but there's a total undersupply of retail: the city centre hasn't seen any new retail development since Lion Yard, 30 years ago," he says. "Even a scheme of this size will not meet all of the demand."
To prove his point, Land Securities is pressing ahead with its own Christ's Lane scheme, opposite Grand Arcade, and has secured pre-lettings to Zara, Bank, H&M and Giraffe.
On site at Grand Arcade the line of the L-shaped mall is now visible. St Andrew's Arcade will draw shoppers in through the doors of the old store until they reach the central atrium, which will link the John Lewis store, the car park and the main mall. Turning right here, shoppers will see the lofty main mall leading through to the Lion Yard scheme at the far end.
This part of the scheme will provide the large regular floorplates Cambridge has always lacked, with deep units reaching back beneath the car park.
Above the shops are 950 car parking spaces, replacing those already on site. To avoid road congestion, there is to be no net gain in spaces.
And in true Cambridge style the centre will have 500 cycle spaces, modelled on the cycle park Land Securities created at Whitefriars in Canterbury.
Experian forecasts Grand Arcade will lift Cambridge from 47th to 25th in the national retail hierarchy. There is now tangible evidence on site that this aim is going to be achieved.
