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The Oracle Is Built Over 700,000 Square Feet Of Prime Retail Space, With ...

The Oracle is built over 700,000 square feet of prime retail space, with space for ninety retailers; it hosts two major department stores (Debenhams and House of Fraser), along with numerous restaurants, bars and cafes, a cinema, and with car parking for nearly two and a half thousand cars. The shopping centre development here has increased Reading's retail capacity by a quarter, and has attracted not only local shoppers but also shoppers from miles around.
The Oracle courted controversy ever since it's opening, with the owners of the shopping centre refusing to sell any retail space to local retailers, and much of the retail space being sold en-masse to a large UK pub chain, in the hope that this would encourage the retail units to be filled. The large number of car parking spaces was, however, welcome in Reading, as there was a deficit in town centre parking; the high cost of the parking space can, however, act as a deterrent for many visitors. Indeed, it is thought, in future, that The Oracle may lose out on custom to Festival Place in Basingstoke which offers much cheaper parking for shoppers.
The new Bull Ring in Birmingham was built in stages, from the year 2000 when the old Bull Ring Shopping Centre was demolished. The first business to move in to the new Bull Ring was the Nationwide Building Society, with Selfridges opening the doors of their famous futuristic flagship store in 2003. The Bull Ring development, covering over 1,240,000 square feet of prime retail space, and in particular the Selfridges store, has proven to be very successful, in terms of attracting visitors (shoppers) to Birmingham town centre; indeed, on its opening day, over quarter of a million people visited the Selfridges store alone and it has been estimated that in its first year, nearly thirty seven million people visited the Bull Ring shopping centre.
As we have seen, therefore, the literature on the effects of in-town shopping centre developments on the existing retail trade in town centres is scanty, but the research that has been undertaken suggests that in-town shopping centres can attract more custom to a town centre as a whole, but that it can shift the geographic distribution of primary vs. secondary retail space in the town centre as a whole in unexpected ways, leading to unexpected, but at times - significant, management problems for the local council. In addition to providing a review of the relevant literature pertaining to in-town shopping centre developments and their effects on the retail outlets in the town centre, the Literature Review has presented some general background information on three in-town shopping centre developments: Festival Place in Basingstoke, The Oracle in Reading and The New Bull Ring in Birmingham.


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