There may be no new shopping centre developments planned in the UK today, or into the immediate future. But the problem of what to do with the old ones hasn’t gone away.

After a summer of thinking, LGIM Real Assets has decided to speed up its rollout of a new approach, providing some of the facilities shopping centres once provided — but forgot about during the boom years.

The keyword is "gathering."

The strategy involves 3,000 live performances, street markets and proper public space.

The programme, trialled in Poole, is now to be extended to the Grosvenor Northampton, the Overgate Dundee and The Beacon Eastbourne.

The gathering approach upends the 1990s wisdom that a shopping centre should turn its back on the town.

In April 2021 L&G began to rethink the 625K SF Dolphin shopping centre, Poole. The landlord installed what it called “a carefully curated and diverse line up” that includes a fishmonger, coffee roaster, design studio, surfboard shop, zero-waste grocery store, art gallery, gin bar and store, home interiors specialist, restored secondhand furniture shop and perfumer.

L&G also gave the tenants two years rent-free to get the concept going.

The logic was that shoppers will return to malls once they become interesting places to shop.

A similar approach will be rolled out across other UK locations in the next two years, L&G said at the time, but the pace of rollout has speeded up.

There are three strands — gather, street market and public — and the plan is to put the life back into shopping centre retail.

'Gather' will curate more than 3,000 live performances and programmed events a year delivered by a plethora of local hosts. The community events and activities will include music and dance performances, yoga, boxercise, kids care, music schools, book clubs and much more all curated in-house by newly appointed community curators.

Street market does what you expect, and 'public' is about “stitching all the offer together and acting as an anchor to bring people to play, work and meet in the heart of the community,” L&G said.

“We are diversifying our occupier base to create truly relevant retail places for our partners, driving value for our investors and delivering better experiences for our customers,” LGIM Head of Real Assets Bill Hughes said.