S as I strolled through Jervis shopping centre last week, a very different kind of shopper caught my attention—think less Louis Vuitton and more “who needs a receipt for their last impulse buy?”
Up to 13 initial bids were thrown in like frisbees for the Dublin city mall, recently tossed onto the market by its owners, Paddy McKillen and Padraig Drayne. The irony? The last time this retail circus went up for sale, Jurassic Park was merely a horror movie, not a theme park attraction for the smartphone generation.
And who doesn’t love a good bidding war? The Sunday Times has the scoop on bidders including the Comer Group, a few American property investors (because, let’s face it, they can’t resist a retail theme park), and Peter Horgan’s Lugus Capital. I imagine the boardroom must have looked like a real-life Monopoly game, complete with corporate drama and panic over missing pieces.
The frenzy was partly fueled by intense bidding for Marlet’s trio of retail parks around Dublin, Louth, and Tipperary—about as exciting as bidding on a vintage pair of roller skates at a garage sale. Who knew retail was back? For more than a year, while offices and private rentals wallowed in their existential crises, shopping has roared back like a bad sequel that somehow got greenlit.
As everyone prepared for a shopping apocalypse during Covid, reality flipped the script. The EY Future Consumer index noted seven out of ten consumers prefer to feel the fabric of their clothes rather than just swipe on a screen from their couch. Who needs online reviews when you can feel the fabric quality firsthand (and sometimes also feel those pangs of buyer’s remorse)?
Jean McCabe from Retail Excellence Ireland single-handedly debunked the “retail is dead” conspiracy theory, stating that customers are flocking back to stores for “the experience.” Ah yes, that magical experience of waiting in line while someone else grapples with a return policy, akin to enjoying a 10-minute wait for a coffee you could make at home for less than one euro.
The retail landscape reflects a curious optimism amid this chaos. I mean, who wouldn’t want to spend €120 million on a shopping centre that doesn’t even include the car park? I’m sure international investors are rubbing their hands together like cartoon villains. And with the last large shopping centre built back in 2011, it seems we’re caught in a great existential crisis of retail construction. Call it a ‘Retail Rut’ if you will, with developers investing more in their home gardens than in the creation of new malls.
So, while we might be reeling from news of retail closures and corporate upheaval, the tenant mix keeps evolving. A fresh wave of brands is moving into spaces left by their predecessors, like musical chairs but with a twist of ‘please take my place, I can’t handle the pressure’. Retail is indeed morphing, changing, and occasionally even thriving amid the paradox of our current shopping psyche. Who knew buying more stuff could feel like a win-win?
