Dundrum Town Centre is forging ahead with expansion plans, but six months on is it really doing the business, asks Laura Slattery
Full-scale sensory assault is what developers at Dundrum Town Centre have planned for the stream of visitors to its ever-expanding complex. Next Friday sees the premiere of the new 12-screen cinema, Movies@Dundrum. And the following week, the town square will be officially launched.
This "dynamic civic space" will boast restaurants, a 21-metre (69ft) choreographed fountain display and a bandstand for live musicians. Three large screens will beam a pacy montage of news, film clips and music videos.
And then of course there's the shopping. Yesterday's opening of upmarket store Harvey Nichols - Harvey Nics to its friends - brings demi-couture and fine dining to Dundrum. But despite all the upmarket hype on the eve of Harvey Nichols' opening, there seemed to be more brown-paper Penneys bags being hauled around the centre than any other kind.
Don Nugent, the centre's director, says its tenant mix is deliberately designed to capture a mix of demographics and age groups: H&M for the younger market, M&S for more mature customers.
Certainly Swedish fashion chain H&M, which hit the headlines earlier this week for dropping Kate Moss (see profile, page five), is proving a draw for younger shoppers, who helped it record profits of €4.51 million in its first three months of trading.
On Thursday night this week, shoppers Laura Finnegan and Clare Hamilton have made the journey out by Luas for H&M - and to keep themselves dry. "We work in town, so we would usually shop there, but we thought it was going to rain tonight," says Clare.
But even with the help of light drizzle, the centre seems to be lacking the traditional Thursday night briskness of the city centre or established out-of-town centres such as Blanchardstown - and the nearby Balally Luas station is eerily quiet.
"I thought it was dead - I was expecting it to be really busy. But the food was good," says Elizabeth McNulty, from Portmarnock, after her second trip to the centre since it opened in March. She also cites H&M as her reason for coming.
This is perhaps worrying for the centre, since H&M is known to have plans to expand in Ireland and may be interested in setting up shop in a new five-storey complex off Grafton Street.
"We know that H&M will expand, because commercially it will make sense for them to open other branches in Ireland," says Nugent.
One million people were estimated to have visited Dundrum Town Centre in its first two weeks last March. But after the hype, and talk of a "new era" for consumers, there were rumours of a quiet summer, with mid-week shoppers rarely troubled by long queues.
Don Nugent doesn't know where these rumours have come from. No, House of Fraser is not ceding an entire floor to Dunnes Stores. The much-criticised car-parking charges, introduced for planning reasons to prevent people using the centre as a park-and-ride facility, were reduced because the traffic management plan proved successful, he says.
Apart from the competition posed by the city centre, there is the Blanchardstown Centre - still technically the largest out-of-town complex in Ireland. Blanchardstown's managing director, Aidan Grimes, says its footfall has not been affected by the opening of Dundrum. With the M50 toll bridge in place, it still has a comfortable hold on northside shoppers and commuters as far north as Co Louth and as far west as Co Westmeath.
"Dundrum has done us a favour in a way by introducing retailers like H&M and Massimo Dutti to the Irish market. Those retailers are not going to be satisfied with just one outlet," says Grimes.
When the Blanchardstown Centre opened in 1996, the Celtic Tiger was just beginning to roar, he notes. "Dundrum has probably suffered from consumers thinking, 'Another shopping centre - so what?'"
Back in Dundrum, however, Nugent is "delighted with the footfall. The average spend here is very good and our late-night trade is kicking off," he says. But Nugent adds that actual footfall and consumer spend figures are currently being compiled and will only be released to retailers in October; until then official figures are unavailable.
Although House of Fraser's commercial director, Patrick Hanly, has been quoted as saying Dundrum is "too large to be an instant success", many retailers echo Nugent's enthusiasm.
Neil Hislop, the executive responsible for Marks & Spencer's Irish stores, says business is improving week-on-week. "The average spend would be higher than in our other stores in Ireland," he said.
Interestingly, Hislop mentions the car-park promotion that has been running for the last month - pay for one hour, stay for three - and says it has brought more people to the centre.
At the other end of the scale from a retail giant such as M&S is Irish accessories retailer Costelloe and Costelloe. Its co-owner, Margaret Costelloe, who lives in Dundrum, says she has been happy with the expansion. "We have quite a loyal customer base and our emphasis is on service. I also think the centre has a good cross-section of people coming to it," she says. Although she admits she was initially sceptical about the late opening hours, she has found trading surprisingly busy at night.
The late opening hours will be even later as Christmas - the real test of any retail centre - approaches. With consumer spending increasing at a rate of 5.5 per cent a year, it would be difficult for Dundrum to miss out on Irish people's seasonal "shopaholism".
And the new year will see evidence of developer Crossridge's civic-mindedness, as part of its agreement with Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. This takes the form of a 200-seat theatre, adult education rooms and community radio studios. Phase two will involve redeveloping the old Dundrum shopping centre at the opposite end of the village.
"This is about the regeneration of the village of Dundrum," says Nugent. "Any development like this takes about two years to settle down."