As businesses face crisis, what next for retailers in Hull?
WILL HULL LOSE MORE MAJOR STORES?
WHAT now for Hull city centre with high street giants Debenhams and the Arcadia group both going into administration?
For while the decline of big retail space is nothing new, the speed of the current crisis certainly is.
Competition from out-oftown retail parks and then online shopping followed by the devastating impact of this year’s coronavirus pandemic has completely changed the landscape for traditional standalone department stores.
Thirteen years ago Woolworths became the biggest casualty of the financial crash when administrators closed all of the group’s 807 UK stores.
The subsequent fate of the King Edward Street premises it once occupied perhaps sums up the tough trading conditions experienced by traditional retalers over the last decade.
No fewer than three store operators have tried to make a go of it since then without success.
The closure of the BHS store overlooking King Edward Square in 2016 was the next significant body blow for the city centre.
The former department store remains empty and is destined to be demolished, but only after a final decision is made on the future of the rrade two-listed Three Ships mural.
After its closure, the building was bought by Hull City Council with the intention of clearing the site for a mixed-use retail, leisure and residential development.
However, gloomy high street trends forced the council to shelve original plans to include large shop units in the £130m Albion Square scheme after initial interest from one national retailer, believed to be M&S, faded.
A revised scheme with smaller ground-floor units and an increase in proposed office space is now being promoted while attempts by the council to find a commercial joint development partner have also been put on the backburner.
The bid to woo M&S followed the company’s decision to close its flagship Whitefriargate branch in early May last year having been a fixture in the city centre for more than a century.
In a rare piece of good news, both for the former M&S building and the former New Look store also in Whitefriargate were bought earlier this year by Hull-based developer Wykeland.
With a combined floor space of just over 100,000sq ft, the buildings are two of the largest retail properties in the Old Town.
While the old New Look store was quickly re-let to the Durham Bed Centre, the old M&S store remains vacant with Wykeland currently working with the city council on a long-term regeneration strategy for Whitefriargate itself.
That work could end up including the landmark Art Deco-inspired Burton menswear store, which first opened in 1936.
Part of Sir Philip Green’s collapsed Arcadia retail empire, the future of Burton along with the likes of Topshop, and Dorothy Perkins today hangs in the balance with administrators now running the group’s 444 stores.
Add Hull’s Debenhams store into the mix and the future of big retail in the city centre has never looked more uncertain.
Occupying a huge site between Prospect Street and Ferensway, Debenhams opened in 1953 taking over the former premises of Thorton Varley.
Nearby, the ongoing revamp of the former House of Fraser store perhaps offers glimpse into a new future for the city centre.
After the department store closed in August las year, its old name of Hammonds was revived by new owners under plans to re-use the ground floor as a food hall occupied by independent traders with the upper floors being converted into offices and serviced apartments.
Covid has inevitably stalled some of those ideas, but recent work to the building, including the installation of new windows on the upper floors, suggests 2021 could see a new chapter starting in the city centre’s ever-changing retail story.