Meet our experts
Denz Ibrahim
Head of Retail and Futuring
Legal & General Investment Management Real Assets
Our approach
We partner with occupiers as part of our retail “Reframe” strategy. We take three areas of focus – “Gather”, “Street Market” and “Public” – and aim to prioritise experiences - like indoor street markets and transform vacant units and unused areas into leisure and lifestyle spaces. Our KINGLAND development in Poole, is a great example of this strategy in action….
In the first phase of the Poole programme, we offered retail units in the KINGLAND development to 10 independent Dorset-based businesses, freeing them of rent and business rates for two years and driving a creative and local focus. Poole’s Kingland Crescent had been recently revamped as part of our strategy to re-position its retail offering, which includes the adjacent Dolphin Shopping Centre.
Six months in, we have contributed to 31 new jobs being created for local individuals
The combined turnover of KINGLAND tenants passed £1 million in January 2022
Over 1.5 million customers have passed through KINGLAND since retail reopened in April 2021
KINGLAND, along with other centre initiatives, has contributed to footfall at the Dolphin Shopping Centre outperforming the UK shopping centre average by +7.1% since April
We estimate that the additional footfall from KINGLAND generated £1.64 million in additional sales for operators within the Dolphin Centre over the first six months of opening
The initiative has been successful in attracting more customers from Sandbanks and Canford, with this demographic spending 3x more at KINGLAND then the average Dolphin Shopping Centre customer
We are now rolling out this approach in three other shopping centres across the UK: The Grosvenor in Northampton, Overgate in Dundee, and The Beacon in Eastbourne. Our goal is to follow this approach as part of our Future Retail Blueprint, across other retail assets, including retail parks.
Our Future Retail Blueprint, is based around our mission to create incredible places for people, re-think the role of the landlord, refocus on treating the occupier as a partner and deliver sustainable, diversified value to our investors.
In 2020, we launched a flexible partnership model based on turnover rent options, which gives our occupiers a complete range of rental options. Every street market occupier is on that model.
We then encourage customers to these areas via strategies like "Gather" – which is taking a more events-based approach to retail spaces. As part of Gather, we have been using vacant spaces across our shopping centres to curate a series of localised events to drive new types of engagement. These range from yoga and boxercise to art classes and kids' clubs. We are aiming for nearly 1,000 events to be held across our shopping centres, each year.
