November 23, 2012
Capital Shopping Centres (CSC) has once again been named as the UK’s leading Owner/Investment Manager, retaining its crown in the latest report from Trevor Wood Associates, ‘Going Shopping 2013 – The Definitive Guide to Shopping Centres’. The report ranks retail schemes on their overall attractiveness, supporting why CSC’s centres remain the venue of choice for new and expanding retailers, from both the UK and overseas.
CSC gained a ranking of nearly 63,500 points in the report, which judges schemes based on their attractiveness to shoppers, retailers and investors by analysing tenant mix, lettable area, type of scheme, weekly footfall and available facilities.
CSC also topped the table as the UK’s largest Direct Property Owner or Fund, bolstered by its 2011 purchases of The Trafford Centre in Manchester and Broadmarsh in Nottingham. CSC now owns and operates a £7 billion portfolio that includes 15 shopping centres comprising more than 16 million sq ft of retail space.
The report illustrated the importance of the individual centres that make up the CSC portfolio. ‘Going Shopping 2013’ has placed five of CSC’s market leading centres in the overall UK top ten– including Metrocentre, The Trafford Centre, Lakeside, Manchester Arndale and St David’s, Cardiff – while ten of CSC’s centres fall within the top 30. The figures illustrate CSC’s appeal to its estimated 30 million unique customers a year.
The research shows that CSC far exceeded any other owner on floor space too, with space in its centres representing nearly twice that of its closest rival. CSC has an active development pipeline with plans to invest more than £1 billion over the next ten years on extensions and asset management projects within its 15 centres as it aims to combine the right mix of global and top UK retail brands alongside the best places to eat and socialise.
Such projects include extensions and major development plans at Lakeside, Watford, Nottingham and other centres.
In September, a 15,000 sq ft catering extension, MetrOasis, opened at the Metrocentre, and Apple has recently opened in three further CSC centres as CSC continues to bolster its tenant mix across all its centres.
David Fischel, CEO of CSC, said: “We are delighted to have once again been ranked the top retail owner in the UK. We continue to invest in and develop our centres so that our shoppers have the very best shopping and leisure experience possible when they visit us.
“Recognition from reports such as Trevor Wood Associates which place so many of our centres at the top of the league tables confirms that we are continuing to provide the best range of shopping centres in the UK to our shoppers and really demonstrates the overall attractiveness of our centres to our retailers.”
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