A retail property expert has explained the success of the retail parks and out-of-town shopping in Reading in the past few years.
Retail parks in Reading are due for a substantial amount of development as a series of plans to reconfigure space in these shopping destinations have either been submitted or approved.
At the Reading Retail Park in Oxford Road, Halfords is downsizing to clear the way for a new Lidl to open there, and the Reading Link Retail Park in Katesgrove is fully occupied and is set to have a JD Gym built on its car park.
Meanwhile, the Brunel Retail Park in Whitley has seen a rejuvenation from a low ebb in 2022, with six units there being left vacant.
Now, The Range is set to move there in September, with Home Bargains and B&M opening new stores last year and Starbucks is set to take over the closed Costa Coffee there as well.
Fiona Brownfoot, a director of retail, restaurant and leisure at commercial property marketers Hicks Baker has attributed the flurry of positive development and low vacancy rates to a future substantial decline in retail space.
She said: “The situation with them is that there are fewer of them, so there’s less space and it’s going to reduce even more.
“So we’re losing space on out-of-town retail. So what is left, in theory should become more desirable therefore the rate should go up.
“But also they’ve obviously diversified slightly, so you’ve now got retail parks where you have smaller outlets as part of the scheme instead of just the big boxes that you used to have and you have drive-thrus and other things to attract people to go down there.
“So slight diversification that they’ve been experiencing as well and a reduction in stock should ensure that all of the retail parks should remain pretty much fully occupied because we’re losing space.”
Here, Fiona referred to upcoming projects for Forbury Retail Park and more controversially, the Reading Station Shopping Park.
At Forbury Retail Park, investment company Abrdn has a plan to demolish the big box units occupied by Furniture Village, DFS, Nattuzi Italia and the KFC drive-thru and replace them with 12 towers containing 820 apartments.
If approved, these will be located opposite the 765 home Huntley Wharf development that replaced Home Base and Toys-R-Us.
The Reading Station Shopping Park occupied by The Range, Majestic Wines, Aldi, One Beyond and TGI Fridays is due to be replaced with 1,000 flats.
The project was approved by Conservative ministers in the previous government despite a Reading Borough Council vote to reject it and concerns being raised by an appointed planning inspector.
The council attempted a legal challenge against the decision which collapsed due to a procedural error.
But Fiona has defended the decision to approve the project and developers in general.
She said: “It annoys me that people have no concept whatsoever of the risks that the developer will take and the amount of money that they have to speculate in order to get planning consent for something.
“Take the Station Shopping Park development as an example.
“I know it didn’t have the favour of the council, but the owner developer on that, they will have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds, I guarantee you, in getting that consent.
“Now if they didn’t get the consent, that’s all wasted money, just lost.
“So that’s the risk, the gamble, the huge gamble that developers take when they buy a site.
“People just have no concept of that whatsoever.”
