IRISH PLANNING INSTITUTE CONFERENCE:TOWN CENTRES will have to be made more appealing to the "grey market" of half-a-million Irish people over the age of 65, including those who had become online "silver surfers", according to a leading retail specialist.
Cormac Kennedy, of CBRE estate agents, told the Irish Planning Institute (IPI) annual conference in Tullamore yesterday that suburban malls were “chasing that market” with accessible websites, free car parking and more leisure facilities.
“With 400 million active users on Facebook and 50 million messages a day on Twitter, word of mouth is being replaced by word of mouse,” he said. “Yet Dublin city centre or Cork city centre as retail areas have no internet presence compared to, say, Dundrum.
“More and more older people are using internet a lot, so retailers without a place on the web will lose out. Retailers will follow footfalls, and city and town centres need to market themselves against suburban competition if they are to survive.”
Although historic city and town centres scored highly for their “sense of place”, he said access was very important. “Car parking is king, and the availability of free parking in out-of-town centres is a great draw.”
Mr Kennedy said CBRE was receiving a lot more inquiries over the past few months from international retailers seeking to set up here than in 2009. “There’s better value in property terms. The sky hasn’t fallen in, and we still have people spending.”
However, in terms of the average number of people shopping per hour, he said there was a 7 per cent to 8 per cent drop in “footfall” on Dublin’s Grafton Street and Henry Street. “We have to do something to stop that. Otherwise retailers will move to where the footfall is.”
Alison Harvey of the Heritage Council said city and town centres needed to be managed like shopping centres, with a variety of uses to ensure their long-term vitality. Maintaining an attractive public realm also meant “zero tolerance” for graffiti and vandalism.
Richard Guiney, chief executive of the Dublin City Centre Business Improvement District (Bid), said there was 3,200sq m of graffiti in the core retail area when it started two years ago; this was now down to 100sq m “and that’s gone within a day or two”.
He said surveys had shown the city centre to be 37 per cent cleaner than previously, while the number of people who say Dublin is “dirty” had halved. He attributed this to the Bid’s supplementary cleaning and graffiti-removal programmes.
He said the Bid concept had been borrowed from North America, and the aim in Dublin was to ensure the city centre remained “dynamic”.
Working with Dublin City Council, the Garda and other agencies, he said anti-social behaviour was being tackled, extra street lighting installed and more events organised, such as a forthcoming arts festival around “bohemian” South Great George’s Street.