The 2006 SCEPTRE Awards dinner at London's Marriott Grosvenor Square hotel was bigger and better than ever. And the quality of the entries reflected the sheer variety and vitality of the shopping centre industry and served as the perfect showcase for an industry on the up.
The judges had a tough task selecting their shortlists, and the mystery shopping exercises highlighted just how much care and attention management teams lavish on their properties.
This year saw the introduction of four new awards categories. The first is technological innovation of the year. And three others follow the successful launch of our quarterly magazine, Shopping Centre Ireland.
The event would not have been possible without the support of the sponsors, and Reliance Integrated Services sponsored the champagne reception, Calendar Club the wine and InfoPod the display equipment.
Entertainment was provided by 'Elvis Presley', 'Tina Turner' and 'Freddie Mercury' before comedian Jeremy Hardy gave a wry slant on the world of retail. And then it was on to the main event - the SCEPTRE Awards themselves.
Centre manager of the year for a large centre was Hans Wustefeld of the Eastgate centre in Basildon. The award was sponsored by Securiplan. Hans joined Eastgate in 1994, and last year was his most successful yet. Footfall was up 13.7 per cent to 14 million, and the average spend was up 19.5 per cent to £5,858 pa. Average dwell time was up by 10 minutes to 1.25 hours but while achieving all this Hans was able to drive down the service charge by 8.8 per cent.
For Hans other landmark achievements last year included opening a school of learning for staff and retailers and winning lottery funding for an in-house shopmobility scheme and Onsight Shopping for the visually impaired.
And an Essex centre also scooped the prize for centre manager of the year for a medium-sized centre, which went to John O'Shea from Freeport Braintree. The sponsor was Photo-Me International.
John is the top-rated manager in the Realm portfolio according to leasing manager Gordon Gabbani. And the centre's performance during 2005 shows why this is the case. Centre turnover was up 11.1 per cent with like-for-like turnover up 7.3 per cent. Footfall grew by a massive 32.6 per cent and the average spend hit £59.93 per visit, the highest of any Realm centre.
Last year saw Marks & Spencer opened at Braintree, and Mark Ashman, head of M&S Outlets, said: "We wouldn't have been so successful if it wasn't for John's help and commercial aggressiveness."
Winner of the centre manager of the year for a small centre category was Peter Roffe of the 93,000 sq ft Hildreds in Skegness. Peter has been manager there for 18 years and last year in a challenging retail climate he increased dwell time by 12 per cent and average spend was up 7 per cent. The asset value of the centre grew by 16 per cent year-on-year.
The centre has been fully let for four years and last year the introduction of three barrows and an area to host promotions generated £30,000.
Shopping centre marketing manager of the year was Laurie Barton-Wright from the Lowry Outlet in Salford. In her two years at the centre she has used value-for-money initiatives to achieve a 5 per cent increase in footfall and a 12.5 per cent sales increase without any increase to the budget. Average dwell time and spend both increased while the number of first-time visitors increased from 13 to 20 per cent.
And also in Manchester the Trafford Centre won customer services team of the year. Andy Bates and his 40-strong customer services team set the highest standards in customer care. In November 2005, 88 per cent of shoppers rated their experience of the centre as 'excellent' or 'very good', up from 85 per cent a year previously.
Town centre manager of the year was Graham McNally from Kingston upon Thames. He was responsible for the UK's first successful BID which will generate more than £5m over five years to be spent on improving the town centre environment. As a result, town centre footfall was up 5 per cent during the last quarter of 2005.
The highly popular young achiever of the year award, sponsored by Rentokil Initial, went to Gavin Prior, operations manager at the MetroCentre at the tender age of 28.
His move to the centre in January 2006 was the culmination of an 11-year career with Capital Shopping Centres, which began as a junior administrator at the Harlequin centre in Watford. Gavin has also taken on the significant responsibility of co-ordinating the MetroCentre's £10m-plus service charge budget. And since his arrival he has introduced a new retailer liaison programme, improving dialogue with the 300-plus tenants.
The Paisley Centre won mall promotion of the year, sponsored by Promotion Space, for its Week on Wheels event. The format is simple: seven people start the week living in a car parked in the mall. They have to perform various tasks and each day one is evicted until at the end of the week there is one survivor, who gets to keep the car. The joint promotion with a local radio station cost the centre less than £10,000, but it generated 2,500 on-air mentions of the centre, with an advertising value of £18,000. The result was an 11.21 per cent increase in footfall during the promotion period, at a time when national figures were down by about 3 per cent.
Retailer of the year, sponsored by Land Securities, was Marks & Spencer, which continues to be the UK's leading retailer of clothing and footwear by both value and volume. But its performance had been declining for almost a decade before the arrival of Stuart Rose and a new management team in 2004.
Rose pledged to rebuild consumer confidence in the Marks & Spencer brand by focusing on product, environment and service, and consumers have reacted with enthusiasm: in the year to March 2006, the fall in market share was successfully reversed, rising to 9.9 per cent from 9.7 per cent the year before. And footfall in the stores rose by 350,000 per week to almost 15 million.
In a relatively short time M&S has seen one of the UK's most dramatic retail turnarounds, reflected in the fact that Shopping Centre's readers voted it their retailer of the year.
And Cranberry won short-term merchant of the year, sponsored by Retail Profile Europe. Cranberry sells dried fruit, nuts and chocolate and unusually for an RMU trader is a self-service concept.
Founder Saeid Saeidpour started the business in railway stations, but after a successful trial at Whiteleys in Bayswater, London, in 2003 it has now become a popular attraction in shopping centres. The keys to its success are high quality produce and a great selection, with over 100 different products to choose from. Significantly, consumers view the products as being nutritious and as a healthy alternative to more traditional snacks.
There always seems to be a lot of buzz around a Cranberry unit, which means they are as popular with centre managers as they are with shoppers.
Prudential's West Orchards in Coventry won technological innovation of the year for its Txt Zone system. This is a new way of tackling anti-social behaviour, and the centre is split into zones, each identified by a number. Shoppers can report any problem to the control room by simply texting a short text number with the zone where they saw the problem.
According to centre manager Andy Talbot the project only cost £5,000 and has had a major impact on shopper's perceived safety.
This year's SCEPTRE Awards also featured three categories reflecting the success of Shopping Centre Ireland magazine. All three categories were awarded on the basis of a poll of the magazine's readership.
Centre manager of the year, sponsored by MacLellan, was Dennis O'Connell of Liffey Valley in Dublin. Last year the centre, owned by Grosvenor and Morley Fund Management, faced its first major challenge with the opening of Dundrum, but Dennis coped successfully by focusing on what Liffey Valley does best: offering stress-free shopping. Footfall dipped temporarily when Dundrum opened but already it's back above pre-Dundrum levels.
Hamilton Osborne King was voted Ireland's top retail agent, only weeks before it was bought for R50m by the UK-based Savills. Under chairman Aidan O'Hogan HOK has established a particular strength in the Irish retail market and it has a dominant position in the shopping centre sector. It was joint letting agent at Dundrum and other major leasing instructions include Whitewater, Rushmere, the Ballincollig centre in Cork, Phase II of the Pavilions at Swords and the Jetland Centre in Limerick.
HOK has built up its international business significantly in recent years to take advantage of the massive investment flow from Irish investors elsewhere in Europe. Over the last five years it has acquired over 150 properties for Irish investors with a value of over E5bn.
Developer of the year, sponsored by CBRE, was Crossridge, for Dundrum Town Centre. Located in the affluent suburbs south of Dublin city centre, Dundrum has attracted international acclaim for its design, tenant mix and management. The initial 1 million sq ft phase opened in March 2005, anchored by House of Fraser, and this was followed in September 2005 by the 'Fashion District' which included Ireland's first Harvey Nichols store.
Spring 2006 saw the opening of the New Mill Theatre, one of the centre's many leisure attractions. And there's more to come with work progressing on further phases. When Dundrum town centre is completed in September 2008 the site will provide in excess of 150,000 sq m (1.6 million sq ft) of prime retail space.
Finally, the lifetime achievement award was introduced by Montague Goldsmith's Ian Mashiter. It went to FootFall's Richard Wright, who's 40-year career has encompassed some of the most high-profile positions in shopping centre development and asset management.
He spent 28 years at Norwich Union, when he was responsible for the development of the Exchange at Ilford, Bentalls centre in Kingston-upon-Thames, the Galleries at Bristol, Maylord Orchards at Hereford and other significant town centre schemes. Additionally he was responsible for managing the entire Norwich Union retail portfolio, one of the largest in the country. In 1993 he joined what was then Jones Lang Wootton as partner in charge of retail asset management. Over a period of nine years he built up the management portfolio from 16 centres to 63, which included the outsourcing of both the MEPC and Morley Fund Management portfolios.
He is a past president of the BCSC and was a board member for 12 years. Since leaving Jones Lang LaSalle, Wright has held a number of non-executive posts including a directorship at FootFall. His most recent appointment is chairman of First East, the urban regeneration company for Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft. This latest appointment reflects his abiding love for the county of Norfolk where his career began and where he lives to this day.
The awards over, the celebrations began and the party lasted well into the small hours.
