Bumper year celebration for shopping centre
The owners of The Merrion Centre, in Leeds, say they have experienced one of their most successful festive periods and an overall yearly growth in footfall.
9 November 2019 saw the centre officially kick start its new look festive season, with the annual launch of Christmas event. Over 21,000 visitors were welcomed throughout the course of the day, a 10% rise in numbers year on year, with guests enjoying pop up acts and entertainment, as well as getting a first glimpse of the brand-new festive lighting.
The success continued in the run up to Christmas with the centre’s first ever fully immersive Santa’s grotto experience, which welcomed over 2,500 children through its doors.
Against an increasingly tough retail and high street back drop, 2019 still proved to be productive overall, as The Merrion Centre welcomed 15 new tenants to its retail, health and beauty and leisure offering.
This included diverse independents including Blue Sakura, Ambassador Barbering and Rude Tattoo Studios joining some of the centre’s newest national brands such as Iceland, PizzaExpress and Starbucks.
This expanding tenant portfolio contributed to attracting an additional 148,387 visitors to the centre during the last 10 weeks of the year – a 6.69% uplift compared to the same period in 2018 – and resulted in over 11.2m internal visitors overall for 2019.
Town Centre Securities (TCS), the listed owner of the Merrion Centre, has said it is confident 2020 will be another strong year for its single largest asset. It has already confirmed that a raft of brands have chosen it as the location for new premises including Dominos, which will open a new pizzeria on Wade Lane, and established Oriental Supermarket, Hang Sing Hong which will launch two multi-Asian restaurants on Wade Lane and Merrion Way.
In addition, 2019 saw TCS successfully fully let the 275,000 sq ft office portfolio which forms part of the Merrion Centre scheme and is split over four buildings.
This included new lettings to Hegemonic and YMCA along with lease renewals to the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), Hoare Lea, Blacks Solicitors and First Locate.
These additions join other longstanding tenants of TCS including Leeds City Council, StepChange Debt Charity & PureGym.
Edward Ziff, chairman and chief executive of TCS, said: “We are extremely proud of our accomplishments at the Merrion Centre in 2019.
“With an abundance of new student accommodation set to open right on our doorstep in the Arena Quarter, we look forward to introducing even more customers to our diverse mix of shopping and leisure destinations.
“As we step into 2020, we are confident our latest tenant announcements, coupled with our ongoing regular calendar of experiential events, will continue to enhance customer experience as we further evolve our offering to provide even more places to shop, eat, drink and ‘be Merrion’ in the heart of Leeds.”
