The retail boss who wants to turn Westfield into 'the new Harley Street'

They call it retail therapy, but it is hard to think of any obvious health benefits of shopping beyond the short term hit of the endorphin rush at the till.

But bosses at Westfield want to change all that. In any ever shifting retail landscape health and wellbeing has been identified as the red hot new growth category that could see clinics and treatment rooms spring up at the capital’s biggest shopping malls, Westfield London in Shepherds Bush, and its sister to the east, Westfield Stratford.

Scott Parsons, the ebullient UK COO at the mall operator’s French owners Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, says he is “detailed conversations” with around a dozen potential occupiers who will bring a very different dimension to the usual holy trinity of mall activities: shop, eat, catch a movie.

In a wide ranging interview with the Standard he said: “We are working on a lot of wellness oriented deals. We’re talking to operators who do everything from full diagnostic CT scans, through to the more wellbeing end of things like physiotherapy.

“And because it’s such a growth area of the market, they look at a high footfall, well connected location like Westfield and they think ‘ah actually that’s sort of a more logical destination...do you want to haul you butt into Harley Street where you’re going to struggle to find a car parking space, or do you want to pull into Westfield.”

The 54 year old added: ”What we’ve got currently are the usual suspects, we’ve got dentists and teeth whitening, beauty and blow dry bars, and barbers shops. But we’re going to up and ante there. We’re talking to private health brands and operators in a growing range - everything from fertility clinics through to boobs and botox. I think the potential is endless there.

“Because if you think Westfield you can drive right into the VIP car park, you can come up have you eyebrows done, buy a Louis Vuitton handbag, and have a glass of champagne with your girlfriends.

”My wishlist is that we have a range of services that rivals Harley Street, and I think we’ll succeed.”

The health kick is part of a major reinvention of the 2.6million sq ft Westfield London mall, where two of the original anchors, Debenhams and House of Fraser, have fallen victim to the rapid demise of the department store.

Both brands are being replaced by very different types of occupier. The House of Fraser space at the south eastern corner of the mall is to become a huge co-working space, called Ministry, operated by the same company that runs the Ministry of Sound nightclub in Elephant & Castle.

Parsons said work is coming on apace: ”We’re on site putting in the mezzanine structure, the steel works going in, it’s on track and we’re really excited because I think the use will be really complementary. It’s in a high footfall area at the edge of the centre, so it will bring in 1000 office workers, buying their sandwichs, buying their mum’s birthday present during their lunch hour, going for a drink after work. We could have gone with a more mainstream co-working operator, but we wanted to bring something that was different.”

To the south west the old Debenhams store will become a TK Maxx flagship - “the most requested brand” among Westfield shoppers apparently - and a second outpost of the TOCA Social interactive football and dining experience.

Along with health and beauty this form of “competitive socialising” is the hottest growing category of occupier, which Canadian born Parsons is also targetting.

Both the existing London malls appear to have recovered their mojos after the trauma of the Covid years. Footfall has almost sprung to pre-pandemic levels, sales are well ahead of 2019 and vacancies are low, New tenants include the LVMH owned French beauty brand Sephora which opened its first standalone physical UK store since 2005 at Westfield London in March.

According to Parsons “they’re smashing all their targets and at Westfield London they’ve trigged this renewed interest in beauty, so what we saw was actually Boots put a lot of thought into their beauty floor and upgraded it, Space NK doubled in size. The arrival of Sephora has caused everyone to up their game.”

While the W12 and E20 landmarks are now well established presences in London’s retail landscape it is the grand projet to the south, in Croydon, that will occupy much of Parsons’ head space over the coming months and years.

The seemingly interminable Croydon shopping centre regeneration saga has already run for well over a decade - five years as a Westfield scheme - but may now be finally unlocked by the buyout of joint venture partner Hammerson’s 50% stake in April. Finally there appears hope of significant movement, an impression likely to be strengthened by the imminent appointment of Kohn Pederson Fox to oversee a new masterplan.

According to Parsons whose journey has taken him from student at London, Ontario, to a leading retail figure in the “other London” across the Atlantic, whatever emerges in Croydon will be very different from what he describes as the “death star” mega malls of yore.

He said: “We’ve talked a lot about sustainability and community and that we’re aspiring to do, something much better much more suited to the needs of the future.

“We’ve beefed up our development team, gone out and hired some fantastic people across the piece, to do everything from asbestos surveys to structural surveys, because rather than take the bulldozer out and obliterate the town centre of Croydon and start again, we really want to make sure we do what’s right from a sustainability point of view and also from a need point of view.

“There’s a lot of concrete there, so we’ve hired just a vast array of consultants to look at every square inch of our 26 acres of Croydon to see what can be repurposed and resused and made fit for the future.

“It’s a really interesting exercise, so I would say the period from now until the year end is ‘lets get the right brain cells on board, the right range of resource both internal and external to set up the team.’, That’s largely done, so we’ll be kick starting that now, I’d say 2024 becomes the engagement period...and then in early 2025 that will be new masterplan submission.”

Parsons calls it an “accelerated time scale” but concedes it will be another 15 years before the good people of Croydon will see their long awaited town centre transformation completed.

Sustainability is something of a mantra these days at Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, whose chief executive Jean-Marie Tritant, last week unveiled sweeping plans to reduce the company’s greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2050.

For Parsons that has already meant changes such as not turning on escalators until 10am to save energy, rainwater harvesting, a huge wormery and a massive switchover to LED lighting. Another major change is that the mall is allowed to allowed to be slightly cooler in winter and a little warmer in summer.

As Parsons explains: “We used to be try and keep the ambient temperature within a 4 degree range and that’s quite expensive. We’ve broadened that, now its between 16 degrees and 24 degrees, we’re just adding a few degrees on each side, and to be honest customers don’t really notice it because chances are they’re dressed for the weather.”

But “Woke Westfield” has its limits. The great malls of London are still essentially vast temples of consumerism bested by few other places in the world in their ability to part people from their hard earned money.

Amid all the green credentials, the new health agenda and the housebuilding - Westfield is building 1250 homes at Stratford and has applied for consent for 1700 new home at White City - that is still their raison d’etre. That is how it should be. And things are looking up after the trauma of the Covid years. The malls are full again - even the champagne bar is coming back. Health maybe the next “big thing” at Westfield, but the punters still need their bubbles.