Barkworth departs from Arndale Centre
GLEN Barkworth, the longstanding general manager of Manchester’s Arndale centre, has left the business.
A spokeswoman confirmed to TheBusinessDesk.com that Mr Barkworth left the company on Friday, having resigned from the business “a few months ago”. He had been general manager at The Arndale centre for more than ten years.
Mr Barkworth had overseen the centre’s extension and remodelling, as well as a major growth in footfall which saw the centre welcome in 5m visitors during the busy 2010 Christmas trading period. The spokeswoman said that a permanent centre manager should be appointed before Christmas.
The Arndale Centre is jointly owned jointly by Capital Shopping Centres and by fund manager Prudential. Since Capital Shopping Centres’ takeover of the Peel-owned Trafford Centre in January, the centre became part of a trading division known as CSC Trafford, which oversees the Trafford Centre, Manchester Arndale, Bristol’s Cribbs Causeway and Glasgow’s Braehead Centre.
It is run by longstanding Peel director Mike Butterworth, who was named as CSC’s new operating officer last week.
The Arndale Centre has also announced today that customer footfall and sales were strongly up on last year, with footfall increasing by 6.8% to 18.9m in the first six months of 2011.
Sales are also up by 7.3% across all categories, with the mobile phones and electrical goods category increasing sales by 77.6%.
In the second half, footfall fell by 10% and sales fell by 40% during the week of the riots (Aug 9th), but rebounded strongly following the city’s “I love MCR” campaign. In the third week of August, more than 2.3m people came through its doors – a 12.3% increase on the prior year.
Interim general manager Sue Anderson-Brown said: “These are a very strong set of first half-year results for Manchester Arndale.”
“In particular, the record-breaking footfall figures in August demonstrate how successful the ‘I love MCR’ campaign has been for the city and is testament to the public support shown following the national disturbances.”
