GLASGOW city centre has been ranked second among 9,000 locations throughout the UK for its retail and leisure offering.
Colliers’ inaugural LocateVenues rankings report looks at metrics including "venue type". brand presence and strength, vacancy and refurbishment rates, floorspace availability, price-positioning in terms of value versus luxury, and category mix.
The 9,000 venues in the research, which are defined as individual destinations, range from major city centres, local town and neighbourhood shopping streets, malls, designer outlets, and retail and leisure parks to standalone grocery stores, service stations, and retail in rail stations, hospitals and business parks.
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Manchester scooped the number one spot with the “largest range of retail and leisure offering across the UK, in one shoppable location”, Colliers said.
Glasgow, in second, was followed by Leeds, Birmingham, and Liverpool city centres.
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Edinburgh was in the top 10, boosted by the opening of the St James Quarter, which Colliers said had “significantly enhanced the city’s retail and leisure offering”.
Ross Wilkie, in the retail team at Colliers Scotland, said: “It’s no surprise to see Edinburgh’s rank improve as, whilst it lost its international tourist draw during the pandemic, it did benefit from the increased popularity of staycations in the UK. The recent opening of the St James Quarter has significantly improved the retail and leisure offering in the city which had suffered for years as a consequence of having no dominant shopping location in the city centre. The scheme has provided operators with modern well configured floorplates securing household names such as JLP, Next, Boots, Mango, Zara and JD.
“In addition it has secured Scottish debuts for Pull & Bear, Bershka W Hotel, ITSU, TOCA and Stradivarius to name a few. However as a result of the St James opening, we continue to see a shift in Edinburgh’s retailing centre of gravity eastwards with high void rates at the western end of Princes Street requiring landlords to be creative in re-purposing their assets and a re-basing of rental values across the board.”
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