Success by design
Published: 25 January, 2012
New BCSC president Peter Drummond is only the third architect to head the retail property trade body. He described his vision to Mia Hunt.
Peter Drummond is chief executive of inter-disciplinary architecture, engineering and design firm BDP, one of the largest design companies in Europe, a company he has had a long-standing career with since being snapped up shortly after graduating from Manchester University with a degree in Urban Planning in 1976. Aside from a brief stint when he left to pursue other ventures, BDP has been his sole employer for over 35 years and he became chief executive in 2004.
After joining BCSC in the ‘80s, Drummond is “delighted” to have been crowned 2012 president. He says the irony of being only the third BCSC president in its 30 year history with a background in architecture at a time when very little design and development is being done, is not lost
on him.
Drummond’s work over the years has included several shopping centres. One of his first projects at BDP was on The Lanes shopping centre in Carlisle, today a listed building.
“Carlisle was a lovely English town and the council had just rejected a monstrosity,” he remembers. “They wanted something more sensitive. What we designed was built between 1978-1984 – it was one of the first mixed-use, conceptual shopping centres and it fitted into the town.
“I thought ‘that’s me’ – I really, really loved it and from that point on I knew exactly what design I wanted to do.”
He also worked on Whiteleys in Bayswater, London, helping to restore what was then an “old, redundant building” and putting it back into use.
And more recently, he was engaged for 4-5 years on the masterplanning of Grosvenor’s Liverpool One, a project he says was intrinsically about the characteristics of the place – a vision to create new quarters of the city.
“The fundamental rules of shopping centre design are still there, the anchors, the car park etc, but we layered it up, taking into account the city, the retail diagram, the mixed-use element and the people,” he explains. “Only then came the masterplan and the architecture, we didn’t want to get into that too soon.
“The people of Liverpool were thinking: ‘Is this just another dream?’ It required engagement between the landlord and the people.”
All that hard work came to fruition when the scheme, consisting of 30 buildings, 130,000 sq m of retail, plus leisure and catering, restaurants, apartments, hotels, offices, a new public transportation interchange and a replacement five-acre park, opened in 2008.
Responsible for revitalising a derelict area of the city centre, the scheme attracted millions of shoppers back to Liverpool, and propelled it 10 places up the retail rankings to 5th in the UK.
And in May last year, Liverpool One scooped the ICSC’s VIVA (Vision, Innovation, Value, Achievement) Best-of-the-Best Award at a ceremony in Las Vegas – a global award that honours outstanding examples of shopping centre design and development, as well as recognising sustainability, marketing and community services.
“It is a joy – the way it looks and fits in with the city, I just love it,” says Drummond. And his pride in the scheme is infectious – the adjectives keep coming, “fantastic” is one, “incredible” another. For him, Liverpool One is a sign of the future: “The industry has learnt that retail and shopping is such a key part of life,” he says. “We’ve learnt to connect and integrate much much better.
“You used to get stuck in the shopping centres of the 1970s – the ones with a door at one end and a door at the other, so that you were made to walk past all the shops before you came out the other side. Liverpool One has enabled people to move around the city.”
Drummond also worked on Parkway in Newbury, an outdoor scheme designed to be an extension of the high street, which opened in October last year. “Shopping centres that don’t have external walls are more fluid, people might move from a property run by the council to one run by a landlord without knowing it and that helps different elements of a town centre to be promoted together.”
What does he like about the job? “Variety and change, the ability to do things, look back and think ‘wow that really works’. It’s eternally challenging,” he says. “But I’m passionate about the part town centres play in people’s lives.”
Aside from his passion for masterplanning, Drummond has also “dabbled in telling government what they should do”.
He wrote a publication Effects of Major Out of Town Retail Development with Dr Ross Davies of the Oxford Institute of Retail Management and Dr Jonathan Reynolds in 1992 for the Department of the Environment. “The true impact still isn’t known but we strongly advised caution,” he says.
That publication was instrumental in the introduction of the Town Centres First policy – something Drummond describes as “rewarding”.
“We need a broader planning policy and we need to get things built in the right places. Government struggles to get the balance between town centre and out-of-town right and it’s a big problem. I fundamentally believe in Town Centres First.”
While the policy has implications in the planning stages of all shopping centre developments, Town Centre First has been given renewed credence since the publication of the Mary Portas review into the British high street.
“As Mary has said, each town centre needs to find its niche and become a destination that people have a reason to visit,” he says. “This means full partnership from all stakeholders in a community, including businesses, local authorities and crucially, customers themselves.
“The public and private sector working at this together is so important. And retail property is absolutely ready for that – it recognises the stresses and strains of the public sector and it’s ready to play a more significant part.”
As for BCSC and the focuses for his year in presidency? “I’m very privileged to have been asked to be BCSC president,” he says. “I never thought I’d be presidential material, former presidents have been the people I look up to so I’m delighted. It’s a great organisation with its heart in the right place and its members have a massive responsibility, to steer the course in keeping town centres healthy.
“The next 5-10 years won’t be a time of massive expansion. And that’s the challenge we face. If it’s not about development, it’s about adapting, improving, sustaining what we have.”
As well as backing-up BCSCs commitment to sustainability, something Drummond says the industry can improve on, he also wants to promote the organisation’s engagement with local authorities. His first objective is to push a town centre strategy, getting landlords and councils to work together on a number of pilot towns.
Another focus is to look outside the UK for inspiration. “BCSCs source of experience is massive and many of its members are already engaged in working around the world. We could learn an awful lot from schemes in other countries – it’s a two way street.”
In terms of events, bringing the two previously separate annual BCSC conferences together in Liverpool in September 2012 is the next step. Drummond admits it’s going to be a challenge to cater for a much broader constituency but he insists the move is a good thing: “It’s really good that we’re doing this, because it’s all part of the same thing – the programme is going to be varied and we’ll make it work.”
“Oh,” he says, signalling another priority as president. “And to keep Michael Green happy.”
