I have spent a couple of days in the sales seeking some new trousers. Not a topic to write about you might think. But I have been noticing for a while that the designers and manufacturers of our clothes are clearly creating for a different race to the human one and that members of the younger generation must have an entirely different shape to mine.

This is the story of a retailer reaping the benefits of a strong heritage while avoiding the trap of being considered old hat. The retailer is Cecil Gee, stalwart of 1960s Kings Road gadabouts and purveyor of all-round fab gear.

Independents day

Despite appeals from major opinion formers, most recently CBI director general Sir Digby Jones, there is little indication that UK businesses have lifted their heads out of the sand following the terrorist attacks on London.

From January 2006, the Energy Performance of Buildings European Directive (EPBD) is being introduced. This European legislation will bring sustainability officially into the commercial property arena and will impact everyone who owns any form of commercial building.

Retail development has been at the core of the Government’s urban regeneration agenda for more than a decade now, and there have been some notable successes in places like Birmingham and Canterbury. However the pressure is on the industry to embrace mixed-use development by incorporating a wider range of uses.

This year will see a surge in shopping centre openings. What are the

Next month's BCSC shopping centre management conference in Edinburgh promises to be thought-provoking and entertaining This year could fairly be said to mark the coming of age of the BCSC’s shopping centre management conference and exhibition. Delegate numbers are at record levels and the exhibition space was all but sold out six weeks before the event, which all goes to prove that the event has now become firmly established in the industry’s calendar.

Basingstoke’s Festival Place has upgraded its CCTV system, with highly positive results

The 1 million sq ft shopping centre at the heart of Telford looks more vital than ever

Making money from children’s rides should be as easy as kids find winding up mum and dad Remember that time when you went to the shopping centre with the kids and spent a fair amount of your time trying to dislodge them from the kiddie ride that was lurking just inside the entrance? You managed to get them into the shops, eventually, but the price of doing so was a revisit to the ride before you left the centre.

CCTV means more than cameras and a man trying to stay awake. One of the problems facing those charged with making shopping centres safer and more secure places for shoppers and retailers is that you can’t watch all of the people all of the time. Thanks however to advances in recording technology you can now come a good deal closer than might have been possible previously.

Coverpoint’s Jonathan Doughty serves up his regular shopping centre restaurant review. This month: Cantina Mariachi

Shopping on board looks set to take on a new dimension following a statement from investment group Tamares which states that it intends to put $500m into a series of floating shopping centres in “select global ports” over the next five years. Designed to look like “modern day tall-ships from the outside,” each of these schemes will be a “vibrant hub for economic and social activity.”

The roar of a Harley Davidson usually means that Roger Allen, centre manager of St Ann’s in Harrow, has arrived at another shopping centre conference.

A visit to the website of the Cumbernauld shopping centre is revealing. It states that the scheme was “crowned as the UK’s first indoor shopping complex, winning awards for its unique design during the 70s. The centre can claim to be the parent and blueprint for all premier indoor shopping centres around the country today.”

Arnold Wilcox-Wood, manager of The Mall at Blackburn, is taking early retirement at the end of the month. He told Shopping Centre that he is fully recovered from his recent illness and expects to remain active in the shopping centre industry so he will not have to resign from his office of chairman and co-founder of the BCSC Association of Shopping Centre Managers and from the advisory board of the College of Estate Management.