Liverpool One rings up £2.2bn sales as visitor numbers leap

SHOPS based in the Liverpool One retail outlet have rung up more than £2.2bn worth of goods or food in its second full year of trading.

The venue has marked its anniversary by revealing that it welcomed 26 million visitors over the past year – up from 20m in 2008-2009.

The average spend of each visitor is now £87 per visit and just seven – out of 151 – shops are empty with five of these in the process of being rented.

Furniture department store Red Brick Mill – trading as Home Quarter – moved into a 60,000sq ft premises yesterday and has begun a 20 week refurbishment.

The new business will open in October after another recent signing – Jamie’s Italian run by celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver – opens in June.

Liverpool One’s estate director Chris Bliss said that the venue was successfully bringing shoppers back to the city centre after several years of visiting other out-of-town retail outlets across the North West.

Mr Bliss said: “We are still witnessing an enormous amount of people returning to the centre of Liverpool to shop with us and our forecasts are that this will increase.

“Liverpool is increasingly becoming a tourist destination – with an increasing amount of cruise ships and conferences taking place here – and we are benefiting from that.

“The first quarter of 2010 has seen sales across business based here rise by 37% – and this obviously compares extremely favourably with national decreases of between 2.3% and 4.5%.

“It is obviously too early to predict what the end of the year figures will be, but we hope that these businesses will achieve double digit sales growth.

“Retailers are telling us that they are – on average – around 26% ahead of their own chain averages.

“The amount spent on food and drink alone over the past 12 months has been £36.7m.”

Mr Bliss acknowledged that the retail sector is normally the last to emerge from a recession but believes that the ongoing regeneration in central Liverpool – such as the site of the former Lewis’ department store – is also likely to draw even more people to the city.

He said: “We predict that we will see between one and two million more visitors joining the 26m shoppers who came to Liverpool One over the past year.

“We have started to see more approaches from retailers wanting to take more space over the past few months which is also a very good sign.”

The Cheshire-based Duke of Westminster’s Grosvenor Group opened the £1bn Liverpool One retail outlet in May 2008.