Yet last November Laker was singled out to be formally cursed by the Knights of St Edmund, a group of Bury St Edmunds locals claiming to be continuing their medieval role as defenders of the town and the shrine of St Edmund. On St Edmund's day, November 20, Laker was subject to a formal and public cursing ceremony - the first for over 500 years.

On one level the story has a Pythonesque aspect but on another Laker takes it seriously, and he's unwilling to talk on the record for fear of inflaming feeling further.

However he's not yet come out in a plague of boils, and he insists no limbs or digits have fallen off. And he's putting a positive gloss on the bizarre event. "It was the best publicity we could have hoped for - it got our development a double-page spread in the Telegraph," he says.

So what had Laker done to incur this medieval wrath? Centros Miller is planning to redevelop Bury's 13-acre Cattle Market site with a 265,000 sq ft mixed-use scheme. Detailed planning permission has been granted and work is scheduled to start on site in September 2006 for completion in autumn 2008.

The 35 new shops and restaurants, totalling 180,000 sq ft will be complemented by over 850 car parking spaces, 65 apartments and a new multi-purpose public entertainment building for St Edmundsbury Borough Council. Pretty unexceptionable, one might think, but it's Hopkins Architects' futuristic design for the 85,000 sq ft Debenhams anchor department store that has proved most controversial.

The curse doesn't seem to have communicated itself to the letting market, either: over half the space is pre-let with New Look taking 12,300 sq ft, Waterstones 8,500 sq ft, HMV 6,500 sq ft and Top Shop/Top Man 10,000 sq ft and rents have been agreed at levels above £100 zone A.

"Retailers have to drive market share and to do that they have to find new locations," explains Laker. "They need modern space, and the big problem with market towns is their unit size and configuration. It's only through new development that we can provide the space retailers need and the rents they can afford."

The property industry is now beginning to focus on these smaller towns, but many are struggling to make development viable when rents are at or below £100 zone A. However Centros Miller came up with a successful format in the mid-1990s for precisely this kind of location, according to Laker.

"What works for us is open-air," he says. "It so happens that it now also fits in with planners' and CABE's view of life." And an open-air development has a number of advantages for Laker: "If they're properly designed and managed they become an integral part of the town centre. For instance you can introduce some restaurants and residential so they become self-policing after shopping hours."

Open-air schemes can be appealing to retailers too, he believes :"The service charges tend to be lower at £1 to £3 per sq ft against £6 to £10 in a covered mall, so that removes a bone of contention."

Another design element that Centros Miller was among the first to incorporate is the move towards larger unit sizes. "Because of the zoning system it's more economical for retailers to trade from bigger and deeper units," he explains. "For example Fremlin Walk in Maidstone had 50 units while our current scheme in Lancaster only has 35, even though it's a similar-sized scheme."

In Lancaster the 500,000 sq ft Castle View development will include 350,000 sq ft of retail with the remainder split between leisure and residential. Centros Miller has been selected by Lancaster City Council and the dominant landowner Mitchell's Pub Company. It is currently going through public consultation on the masterplan for the 10-acre site, and completion is not expected until 2010.

But even that far ahead, demand from retailers is strong according to Laker. "There's real pent-up demand in Lancaster in the 5,000 to 15,000 sq ft range," he says. "But we're also designing in units for local retailers - something we're also hoping to do at Bury St Edmunds."

This has become a hobby-horse for Laker. "Why don't local authorities write it into the development brief?" he asks. "If it's a 350,000 sq ft scheme and they want just one per cent allocated for local traders that would still provide three or four units. Then it would simply be a matter of adjusting the land value to account for it."

And it's not just altruism that's driving this, Laker insists. "If we don't encourage new retailers, where will our tenants come from with all the consolidation that's going on in retail?" he asks.

When it comes to leasing a mall Laker detects a two-way pull going on: "At the moment retailers are tempted to look at the past few months' trade and say 'we've got to pull back.' At that same time they can only drive market share by taking new space. Some might be a bit more cautious but they are still signing."

So that just means developers like Centros Miller have to be more persistent. "It's often down to shoe leather," Laker says. "You have to convince retailers it's somewhere they can trade profitably. For instance we got HMV into our development in Boston. It wasn't somewhere they'd naturally have gone so we had to make the case to them."

And this is just one extra complication in the development process. "The development process is getting longer and more complicated," Laker notes. "The average scheme now takes five to seven years. Environment assessments are becoming more and more stringent and planning tends to take longer."

But he's pleased that Lancaster has been selected as a pilot scheme for a new fast-track planning system.

However he says government pledges to speed up the compulsory purchase process have not had any practical impact. "The majority of local authorities don't have any experience of a scheme of our size. They're naturally cautious," he says. "If a scheme is going to happen then you need a champion in the council - and that can be either a councillor or an officer - but the problem is until you get involved with a scheme you don't know whether there's anyone there able to take on that role."

So where does Laker see Centros Miller heading? "We detect that the investment companies are shying away from speculative development, and there are a lot out there, Irish investors for instance," he says. "So we're looking at getting into development management: holding investment companies' hands through the development process. We're be making our first announcement shortly."

With this in mind, and because the massive Northern Quarter project in Portsmouth is going on-site, Centros Miller has geared up over the past six months with three new development surveyors. But Laker would be reluctant to see Centros Miller grow too big. He spent 20 years at Wimpey when it was a property industry giant, developing schemes like Coppergate in York and Liverpool's Clayton Square. But he says: "It's one of the attractions of being in a smaller company like Centros Miller - you really can make a difference."

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