Touchwood, Solihull
Published: 03 August, 2011
Lend Lease’s 650,000 sq ft Touchwood retail and leisure scheme opened in Solihull on September 5 2001 – and according to Shopping Centre (complete with headline ‘Touchwood touches down’) it received a warm welcome from visitors and retailer.
The scheme doubled the amount of retail floor space in Solihull to 1.25m sq ft, and opened 97 per cent let or under contract, with a 265,000 sq ft John Lewis department store – the only one in the West Midlands – 80 shops and 20 restaurants. Sixty retailers were trading on opening day. The centre welcomed 63,000 visitors on its first day – treble the number predicted despite the ‘soft’ nature of the opening.
‘Management and operation are imbued with the Lend Lease spirit, and the scheme features internet access in the welcome halls and ergonomically-designed baby-changing stations,’ read the 2001 article. ‘Concept-designed by Eric Kuhne – responsible for the ideas behind Bluewater – Touchwood reflects the heritage of the affluent town. It integrates with the high street with box bay windows, gables and intricate brickwork.’
Gap, Next, Sephora, French Connection and USC were among the retail line-up with Uniglo, L’Occitane, Karen Millen, Gant, Mango, Morgan and Benneton due to open shortly afterwards.
Restaurants included Fish! Diner, Yellow River Cafe, Pizza Hunt and Nando’s.
General manager, Paul Birkett, who moved to Touchwood from Bluewater in 2010 says that integrating a shopping centre into the town has always been key for Lend Lease.
“We’re cautious with all our centres,” he explained. “We can’t just parachute a big box into the town – it has to be deeply imbedded and the tenant mix has to compliment retail in the town. That’s always been part of the Lend lease strategy.”
Birkett described retailer demand as one of the main changes in the last decade. “Demands for units used to be 15,000 sq ft with plenty of back-of-house storage,” he said. “But with the advent of logistical solutions and ‘click and collect’, retailers want their shops to be double the size with very little storage space.”
According to Birkett, the centre management team works very closely with retailers to find out how things are selling, how profitable they are and whether they need marketing support. “Landlords can no longer just collect rent,” he said. “They have to have a relationship with their tenants.
“We’ve done a huge amount of research into identifying what people like about the centre and what they don’t like – that’s important not only for our customers but also for our stakeholders – the local authority and the retailers themselves. There needs to be a broader level of collaboration.”
