RETAIL MARKET:JUST TWO-AND-A-HALF years after opening for business, Scotch Hall shopping centre in Drogheda is to lose one of its best known fashion stores, Top Shop.
Top Shop trades out of the largest of four shops in the centre rented by the giant UK Arcadia Group, now one of the leading fashion retailers in Ireland and the UK.
With the owners of Scotch Hall now embarking on a substantial extension to the shopping centre, the Arcadia Group is apparently offering a year's free rent to suitable traders prepared to take over the 25-year lease of the Top Shop unit.
The 692sq m (7,451sq ft) unit is rented at €330,000 per annum but an announcement from selling agent CBRE in London advises possible tenants that "incentives are available subject to covenant status". In addition to the rent, which will be subject to a review in October 2010, traders will also have to pay a rates bill of €32,874 per annum.
The Arcadia Group's other shops in the Drogheda centre are Evans, Wallis, Dorothy Perkins and Burtons. Top Shop and Dorothy Perkins were running mid-season sales over the holiday weekend and, according to a sales staff member in Top Shop, much of their business is concentrated on Fridays and Saturdays.
A manager in another store said the recent slowdown in the early part of the week was due in part to the fact that shoppers had been returning to West Street, the town's main high street, since the completion of its pedestrianisation.
The decision by the Arcadia Group to close the Drogheda outlet may signal further closures in Ireland by the group after a rapid period of expansion over the past decade.
Traders in several other new shopping centres opened over the past two years in other provincial cities and towns are reporting a significant fall off in consumer spending since the beginning of this year. A second shopping centre opened in Drogheda in 2006 - Laurence Town Centre anchored by Marks Spencer and Shaws - still has a large number of vacant shops boarded up.
In spite of the uncertainty about the economy and the fall off in consumer confidence, another shopping centre is to open next November within about two miles of Scotch Hall on the Dublin Road. It will also be anchored by Dunnes Stores who are the main tenants in Scotch Hall. Significantly, the €120 million South Gate centre at Grangerath will offer 700 free surface car-parking spaces with the aim of attracting many of the shoppers who pay a standard charge of €1.30 per hour in the multi-storey car-park at Scotch Hall.
Edmund Douglas of letting agent Douglas Newman Good Commercial said yesterday that he was sorry to see Top Shop leaving Scotch Hall but was pleased that its other labels were remaining as part of the fashion line up. Of the 55 shops in the centre only two (Top Shop and No Name) were experiencing difficulties.
Gerry Barrett of Edward Holdings, which developed the centre, says that Scotch Hall has a footfall of 88,000 shoppers per week and that these numbers have remained consistent since the outset. "The Scotch Hall development is bucking the trend of many shopping centres around the country with footfalls remaining steady."
He said building was underway on the second phase which would extend to 43,000sq m (462,848sq ft) of commercial space and cost €200 million. A number of existing tenants were looking for larger units and detailed discussions had already taken place in recent months with major retailers who had expressed a strong interest in being part of the second phase.
These would be their first outlets in the north-east.
In addition to a broader range of shopping facilities, the next phase will also include a 1,500-seat multiplex cinema, restaurants and an extension to the D Hotel which opened at the same time as the shopping centre.
