The future of retail parks: park life but not as we know it
Out-of-town retail parks are morphing before our eyes. While the barricades of boxes on the edge of town devoted to DIY and bulky items are still there, many now offer a more sophisticated retail mix, including a decent fashion proposition.
These shopping locations - described by one expert as “essentially very large car parks with stores attached” - are only set to evolve further from their functional and somewhat soulless origins.
In fact, they may cease to be out-of-town retail parks as we know them at all. So what might the retail park of the future look like? For some, the term ‘out-of-town retail park’ is already out of date.
“We no longer use the terms ‘retail park’ and ‘shopping centre’ because it is industry terminology that doesn’t reflect consumer or retailer behaviour and is an outdated view of the market,” says Darren Richards, head of retail asset management at British Land.
Alex McCulloch, associate partner at CACI, expects out-of-town retail parks to fall increasingly into the former as much as the latter category, in other words somewhere that looks more like a conventional shopping centre, but without a roof.
“Fashion retailers perform better in retail parks that offer free parking and comparatively low rents and where they have the opportunity to trade from well-configured units.”
Click & collect has and will continue to drive much of this change. Ros Oxley, a director in JLL’s retail management team, expects to see an increase in drive-through collection points and click & collect-based stores, while others anticipate some retailers will offer collection lockers instead of a full-line store. Changing pods, in which customers can try on clothing and send their purchases back if necessary, could also become the norm.
The drive to make retail parks more appealing to shoppers has seen owners pay more attention to aesthetics. Gunn says parks are trying to soften their look, with artificial grass for example, but he describes it as a “difficult task”.
In fact, given the change that has occurred over the past 10 years, we could well be looking at revolution rather than evolution in the next decade.
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