Our guest speaker Ian Ogden Design Director of Westfield Shoppingtowns Ltd.
gave his company’s view of the development of the prestigious Westfield Stratford using some very interesting slides to illustrate his talk.
Some key points:
Some key points:
- It is a mixed development - retail, leisure and commercial
- Statistics are always in the “millions” which is no stranger to Westfield – the Lowe Group from Australia, who broke their teeth so to speak on an Australian development in West Field.
- Lowe Group have gone on to projects in Australia, Europe, UK and South America.
- On the cards are developments for Milan and Croydon…. no one asked about the link!
- Stratford has millions of square feet of retail , millions of visitors, millions of feet of commercial. And a £4bn price tag
- Well served by road, bus, rail, HS1, LU, taxi, on-foot, cycle and maybe at some time in the future they will need to turn to have river access
- Shopping rationale was established in the West End and Lakeside and the “economics” suggest Stratford would work to infill the gaps
- Westfield are always principal contractor employing all the specialists directly
- The project itself has the largest ever contribution to a Section 106 amount at £200m.
- Jobs during construction topped 27000 and leave a legacy of 10000 permanent posts
- 97% of the space was leased before opening
- Westfield own, operate and FM through their own companies and also have a projects arm for the inevitable life cycle refurbishment works along the way.
- A measure of success is the 800000/week footfall. Retail is more lucrative than leisure
The Q&A was wide ranging from river access through sustainability to post Olympic fervour all of which Ian answered with lots of statistics showing that Westfield’s initial homework has stood the test. The presentation slides were a real help to members helping them engage in a Q&A session as well as post-presentation discussion and networking over the usual glass or two of wine!!
