Hull Raiser
Published: 07 March, 2006
The reaction of most people arriving in Hull by train is probably not good. Row upon row of boarded-up Victorian terraces await demolition and the journey from Doncaster is through a landscape of unremitting flatness.
Alighting, the major point of interest is a large building site. Welcome to St Stephen's, the two-floor, 540,000 sq ft ING Real Estate shopping and leisure scheme-to-be in the middle of this city.
If you detect a hint of Hullism in all this, Richard Macartney, ING's letting manager for the development, is not about to change your mind: "It's got a massive catchment and that's one of its key strengths. The thing about Hull is that shoppers tend to stay in Hull."
All of which notwithstanding, it appears that retailers are proving responsive to a scheme that will bring retail glamour to a location that currently goes a fair way towards defining the word depressing. St Stephen's already has a 110,000 sq ft Tesco Extra hypermarket signed up, anchoring a development that includes signings from names such as Next, River Island, H&M and Zara. Mark Owen, development director at ING, says that the intention is that this should be a fashion-led mall with a large food retailer. There will be no department store; this is intentional.
Part of the reason may be that Hull, with its large sprawling centre is not without its fair share of retail action. Debenhams and House of Fraser are the two department store offerings in town and Princess Quay, another shopping mall (owned by Henderson Global Investors and with an expansion plan in place that is due for completion by 2009), is nearby. The most obvious question then is why did ING join the scramble to build St. Stephen's and also why has it taken six years for things to kick off?
The first answer is that the £200m project is part of a more general regeneration of Hull that will see the redevelopment of Ferensway, on which the St Stephen's site sits.
Other parts of this regeneration include the construction of a waterfront area to be known as "The Boom" and an office development dubbed Humber Quays. Hull it seems is on the way up.
The delay in getting started has been getting agreement on a transport interchange that will help shoppers reach the mall: "There were a lot of interested parties," as Owen puts it.
This may explain why it has taken so long to get on site, but it still does not really provide an answer to why Hull should prove so attractive to a developer. Owen comments: "We're bringing in new retailers into Hull with the likes of Hennes and Bershka. The whole reason for the scheme was to bring in new retailers and to enable existing ones to expand their footplates." This sounds right. The majority of Hull's retail stock in based on old, small footprint retail.
All in all, a new dawn for an isolated city on the edge of England? We're on the verge of finding out.
If everything finally goes to plan, St Stephen's will open its doors in September 2007.
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=== St Stephen's: The Basics ===
Total area: 540,000 sq ft
Retail space: 430,000 sq ft
Cost: £200 million
Developer: ING Real Estate
Opening date: 9th September 2007
Anchor stores (confirmed): Tesco, Next, H&M and Zara
Car parking: 1,550 spaces
Letting agents: Lunson Mitchenall, Jones Lang LaSalle
Typical rents are: "between £40 to high £40s" per sq ft
