Since King’s Cross shopping centre Coal Drops Yard launched five years ago, urban regeneration specialist Related Argent has been on a learning curve.
Having opened with a heavy focus on high-end stores, the developer soon faced what it describes as “threshold anxiety” from many visitors – a term describing shoppers’ unease about entering spaces with products they feel are not intended for them.
Now, the team is executing a leasing strategy to boost the mainstream appeal of CDY as well as King’s Cross’s overall retail and leisure offer, which accounts for some 450,000 sq ft of the 8m sq ft scheme.
James Rayner, head of retail at Related Argent, says the team behind the mall has spent “a long time learning lessons” on what has worked at the scheme since its launch.
“It’s fair to say – and I am pretty vocal about this to the retail agency market – not everything worked, and that’s okay,” he says. “We tried to do something unique here, and Covid didn’t help us. The scheme was less than two years old before Covid hit. But we did use Covid to help pivot some of our tenant mix.”
Maximising appeal
Rayner says while CDY is unique for its “eclectic” retailers, it needs occupiers that are “more known”. It is hoped the upcoming launch of mixed-use venue Mare Street Market, which has signed for 18,000 sq ft at Lewis Cubitt Square, as previously revealed by EG, will help change perceptions that customers can spend more time and money at King’s Cross, or, at least, spend at more accessible price points.
“That’s the bit we have worked hard to address,” says Rayner. “We need to provide a broader price architecture for people.”
The developer is hosting an event for retail and leisure agents this week, focusing on leasing the northern part of the redeveloped site, which includes Keskidee Square and Chilton Square. It aims to incorporate more leisure, food and beverage and wet-led offers.
Rayner says there are around 20 retail and restaurant spaces to lease over the “next couple” of years. Those include some larger stores where leases have already expired.
Food for thought
As part of that strategy, the company is seeking to create a zone within CDY that will provide grab-and-go food concepts. It has already front-loaded the feasibility assessments for conversions on the upper level and is working on licensing those spaces.
To enable this, vintage clothing retailer Beyond Retro is set to relocate to a different part of the centre, freeing up nearly 2,700 sq ft for an anchor F&B operator. Related Argent is in “very early” talks with an unnamed occupier that Rayner says is different to the rest of the centre’s offer.
He adds that it needs to be accessible, at a “good price point” and a “relatively recognisable” brand. This will drive other food uses for the units surrounding it to create a “hub” for grab-and-go concepts.
“All of the F&B performs well, but the price points are pushing a bit higher and we’d like to bring that down a bit, [to offer] a broader spectrum of price choice,” he says.
For Rayner, leisure is a crucial piece of the puzzle that the redevelopment is missing. While there is a cinema and artist-led gallery space Lightroom, competitive socialising is absent. He hopes that one empty space, measuring just over 8,000 sq ft, will host an operator that can fill that gap.
“Competitive socialising is squarely the demographic we have in Meta, in Google and the DeepMind buildings,” says Rayner, adding that the offer may also be supplemented with more VR.
Adding more amenities, such as a grocery store, convenience-led retail, pharmacy, healthcare or creche, is another priority for Rayner – necessities in the neighbourhood that “are often overlooked”, especially in a hugely office and university-focused area such as King’s Cross.
Such additions are especially important, given that more of the site’s residential blocks north of CDY are opening up. The 103-home Cadence building is fully sold, while W Zone, the site’s first BTR scheme, is launching in October. More amenities will also support new occupiers such as Meta, which signed for more than 620,000 sq ft of office space at Lewis Cubitt Square last year.
Tech support
Despite Meta and Google’s respective moves to slash their global office footprints, Rayner says that both tech giants have remained committed to King’s Cross.
He says Meta continues to work on its occupation strategy for those buildings and that King’s Cross is seen as one of its key campuses globally. The Facebook parent has also reportedly issued a return-to-office mandate.
Meanwhile Google’s £1bn headquarters, purpose-built by parent company Alphabet, has been in development since 2016. It is due to occupy the property next year.
“I speak to the team there every two weeks and was on a trip with them to look at some of their offices in New York last year,” says Rayner. “They show no signs of slowing down with their retail and occupation strategies.”
He added that its strategy for occupation “continues to evolve”, given the scale of the location. Including DeepMind, Google’s combined presence at King’s Cross spans some 640,000 sq ft.
There will be 18 retail spaces at the Google building, which Rayner says the developer will be keen to engage agents on next year. “We’ll need their ideas on this,” he says.
Work in progress
To make the district more welcoming to visitors, the developer is also improving wayfinding in the district. Proposals were granted by Camden Council last month to make navigation around CDY clearer with new signage and lighting. Related Argent is working on progressing a broader digital strategy covering the whole estate, and is drawing up plans to present to the council.
Rayner says that while finding the tenant balance for King’s Cross has not always been easy, CDY has stayed true to its goal of offering the “best of the high street and British side street”. He is also keen to emphasise that the retail and leisure offer at CDY – and the wider King’s Cross transformation – is further from being a finished product than people might think.
“There’s a perception that once Coal Drops was finished, that was it – and it’s not at all,” says Rayner. “We went through our busiest point of construction during the pandemic.
“We’re open for business – come and talk to us. We still have really interesting and unique real estate to let. We continue to try and position ourselves differently to other parts of London, and that is so much more challenging than it was five [or] 10 years ago. We want to attract that next set of interesting occupiers.”
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