Grafton Street is the fifth most expensive shopping street in the world, for reasons that escape Rosita Boland.
This week, Grafton Street hit the headlines on two counts. On Wednesday, we learned that it had become the fifth most expensive street in the world in which to run a shop, behind New York, Paris, Hong Kong and London. The average annual rent on Grafton Street is now €3,372 per square metre (€313 per square foot): an increase of 46 per cent in the last year.
The following day, we heard both of the historic Bewley's Oriental Cafés, at Grafton Street and Westmoreland Street, will cease trading at the end of November. The chairman of the Campbell Bewley Group, Patrick Campbell, gave several reasons for the closure, chief among them being high rents and competition. "It's like part of Dublin dying," he said on Morning Ireland yesterday.
Grafton Street is only 350 metres long - or short, depending on which way you look at it - but it has long had a reputation as Ireland's grandest shopping street. It's also a busy street, and becoming even more so. The latest figures for pedestrian footfall, relating to the third quarter of this year, average 13,500 per hour. This is an increase of 20 per cent from the second quarter of the year; an increase being credited to the new Luas Green Line, which terminates at St Stephen's Green.
Henry Street is also an increasingly busy street. Its latest footfall figures are 12,800 an hour on Saturdays; a figure certain to show an increase in the next quarter, following the opening of the Luas Red Line. Zara has attracted lots of new shoppers, and the proposed H&M fashion store will do the same. It is the nearest competition Grafton Street currently has.
There was a time when Grafton Street had a very distinct atmosphere. You knew you were in Dublin when on it. It had variety. Personality. Today, with very few exceptions, you could be anywhere, so thorough is the infiltration of clothing chains, most of them British.
Boots bought the lovely old chemist's Hayes Conyngham & Robinson, and gutted it, leaving nothing of its period interior; Marks & Spencer bought the old Brown Thomas, with its mirrored walls and atmosphere of gentility and turned it into a place to buy socks and prepared meals; Brown Thomas bought Switzers and expanded at the loss of atmosphere. And now beloved Bewley's, the legendary lofty, clattery café, with its bejewelled Harry Clarke windows and its century of stories and conversations, is closing and being tipped to re-open as yet another fashion outlet.
The public must surely be wondering how it is that Grafton Street rates as the world's fifth most expensive street, particularly as some of the flagship stores, such as Weirs and Brown Thomas, own their properties and thus pay no rent.
What makes the street rentals so expensive? True, you can order a €120,000 Hermès crocodile skin bag with diamonds at Brown Thomas, but if you're after a fine dining experience, unless you are fond of fries and burgers, there is nothing on offer. McDonalds, Burger King and Captain America are the long-established burger outlets on Grafton Street: eateries that compare poorly with the Champs-Elysées or Fifth Avenue.
Grafton Street has become the perfect, terrible symbol of our Celtic Tiger society. We can conclude only that we have got what we deserved. The fifth most expensive shopping street in the world has lost its style, its individuality, its variety and its soul.
Streets ahead: what the best of the rest have to offer
Champs-Élysées, Paris
Rent per square metre: €6,159. Rent is higher on the sunny, south-facing side because more people - hence potential customers - walk there.
Length of street: 2.5 km
Flagship stores: Virgin Megastore and Monoprix on the north side; Louis Vuitton on the south side. Anyone and everyone goes to Virgin and Monoprix, for CDs and groceries. Vuitton is flooded with Japanese tourists buying signature handbags and luggage.
Most famous eateries: Le Fouquet's, half-way up to the Arc de Triomphe on the left, was one of James Joyce's favourite restaurants and serves old-fashioned French cuisine in elegant if snobbish surroundings. The recently refurbished Le Drugstore at the top of the avenue is hi-tech, state of the art design and caters to a younger, trendier, but equally snobbish clientèle.
The shopping experience in a nutshell: Crowded and extremely varied, with everything from fast-food restaurants to cinemas, grocery stores, chain outlets and haute couture. On the south side of the avenue, Lancel and Hugo Boss will soon join Vuitton. A series of split-level malls delve deep into the north side. The avenue has the highest percentage of tourists of any shopping area in Paris.
Lara Marlowe
Causeway Bay, Hong Kong
Rent per square metre: €4,891. Retail rents in Causeway Bay have risen by over 50 per cent in the last year or so.
Square area: The precinct is spread over several hundred extremely packed square metres.
Flagship stores: Major Japanese department store chains Matsuzakaya, Mitsukoshi and the 10-storey mega-store, Sogo.
Most famous eatery: Pearl City Mansion is a favourite eatery, but rather than one specific hostelry, there is Jardine's Bazaar where each street has its own gourmet speciality.
The shopping experience in a nutshell: Causeway Bay is one of the busiest areas in the world and can be baffling to the senses for the uninitiated. It is also home to the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club. For years, the Jardine group has fired a cannon shot at noon every day in Causeway Bay, near Victoria Harbour, as a time signal. The Times Square mall, completed in 1994, changed the landscape of the area entirely. On two million square feet, it is home to a 12-storey shopping arcade with more than 200 shops, restaurants, and a Cineplex and topped off by two office towers.
Clifford Coonan
Oxford Street, London
Rent per square metre: €4,450 (£3,090)
Length of street: 2.4 km
Flagship store: Selfridge's is the largest and oldest shop on the street. Established in 1909, it offers a cornucopia spread out over one million sq ft of selling space.
Most famous eatery: London city authorities limit food outlets to cafés to make sure it remains a shopping street.
The shopping experience in a nutshell: Oxford Street is often described as Europe's premier shopping precinct, where shoppers can buy anything from a pair of sunglasses costing 50p to a mink coat. Slicing east-west through fashionable W1, Oxford Street is a short walk from most of London's major landmarks - Buckingham Palace, Marble Arch, the placid green oases of Hyde Park and its Serpentine, Regent's Park and Queen Mary's Gardens, the bookshops of Charing Cross Road, the nightclubs of Soho and the elegant eateries of Kensington and St James's.
Lynne O'Donnell
Fifth Avenue, New York
Rent per square metre: €8,023 ($10,226 )
Length of street: 12 km but serious shoppers count only the 1.5km from 42nd Street to 59th Street.
Flagship stores: Saks Fifth Avenue, FAO Schwarz, Tiffany & Co, Bergdorf Goodman, Van Cleef & Arpels
Most famous eatery: The Palm Court for afternoon tea, the Oak Bar for cocktails and the Oak Room for dinner - all at the Plaza Hotel, a Fifth Avenue landmark since 1907.
The shopping experience in a nutshell: Whatever you want it to be. Variety is the chief attraction and shopping here remains one of Manhattan's least stressful experiences. You can relax at Banana Republic where the service and prices are friendly; risk appraising stares from the staff at Tiffany's; get no-nonsense advice from veteran assistants at department stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman where the sales are worth the battle or regress at FAO Schwarz, the world's greatest toy store. The dollar's current weakness against the euro adds 20 per cent to that $4,000 Chanel jacket and prices in Prada, Versace and Emmanuel Ungaro increasingly give American shoppers "sticker shock". But window shopping is free and the Thanksgiving and Christmas window displays are among the finest.
Anna Mundow