Is the city centre finally getting its revenge on Meadowhall?

Has Meadowhall been a blessing or a curse for Sheffield? If you consult the annals of history, the predictions skew gloomy.

"The suggestion that Meadowhall will be of benefit to Sheffield's City Centre is not supported by experience in similar situations anywhere else in the world. The City Centre can and should counter the very real threat of this competition to its retail core”.

The authors of this sentiment certainly had enough international experience to back up their claim — it was penned by a joint panel of the English Tourist Board and leading figures from San Francisco, Paris, Berlin and other world cities, reporting to the city council. Those words were published in November 1988, two years before Meadowhall opened. They stopped short of calling for Meadowhall to be scrapped. But they spelt out the danger in no uncertain terms.

So was this paranoia or a remarkably prescient take on things? If there was ever a ripe time to evaluate Meadowhall’s effect on the city, it would be now. In recent weeks, there have been reports that Meadowhall is soon to go onto the market. 

Its principal owner, British Land, dismisses these reports as “media speculation”, which they won’t be commenting upon. But enough details have been published by the Sunday Times (including the company organising the sale, the potential value, and even a possible buyer) that it seems someone who knows something has been talking. 

The shocking detail: the rumoured price tag. £750m sounds a lot, but it’s half of what the centre was valued at ten years ago when the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund purchased a 50% stake in it. So how did the shopping centre reach this point?

The birth of an icon

The story of Meadowhall begins in Barnsley, where Paul Sykes grew up in the fifties. On getting a job at a local scrapyard, he spotted that old car batteries were being discarded and began cleaning them up and selling them on. It wasn’t long until Sykes’ boss twigged — prompted by wondering how on earth Sykes could afford a car on the meagre wages he paid him. When he explained, his boss demanded a 25% cut and Sykes realised that the only way to get on was to set up his own business. His company, which sold old bus parts to China, was hugely successful, making him a millionaire. He began to move into property. 

By the mid-eighties, Sykes had begun to dream of an “American-style” shopping mall for South Yorkshire. And he thought he’d found the site. Where most people saw a post-industrial wasteland off the M1, Sykes saw opportunity. It was far from straightforward — the site was split between multiple landowners, and as a former steelworks needed masses of remediation. “A lot of people thought he was completely mad”, someone who knew him at the time recalls. But he was certain this was where it had to be, and gradually began to buy up the land.

This fits with what I’ve heard about Sykes, both from those who knew him, and wider reading. He’s quite a private individual (he didn’t respond to our request for an interview), but someone with totally assured confidence in his instincts, willing to bet big when he knows he’s onto something. In the late nineties and into the noughties he started putting serious money into Eurosceptic causes, like Denmark’s campaign against the Euro in 2000, then later UKIP campaigns, long before anyone was seriously anticipating Britain leaving the EU. As with Meadowhall, his investment proved shrewd. A source who doesn’t wish to be named tells me he anticipated the financial crisis, divesting his remaining investments shortly before many of them collapsed in value.

But back in the 1980s, Sykes faced a problem: he hadn’t managed to persuade enough big name brands to sign up to the Meadowhall vision. Without anchor tenants like M&S and Debenhams, it would flop. That’s where Eddie Healey came in. Healey had a similar vision for a site in Rotherham, but the advantage of somewhat deeper pockets to sweeten the deal for any wavering retailers. He’d worked on the Metrocentre in Gateshead so had the credibility and contacts to persuade businesses to sign up.

While both men wanted to take their personal vision forward, it was clear there was only room for one major shopping centre in South Yorkshire. Healey came round to seeing that Sykes had the better site: they needed each other. A deal was done, and they took on shared ownership of Meadowhall.

When Meadowhall opened, the hype was palpable. Footage from the opening day shows shoppers running to be the first inside. “There’s nothing like this in Chesterfield”, comments one wide-eyed woman.

That was an understatement. It’s hard now to imagine how revolutionary Meadowhall seemed at the time, because it became the template for much that followed. But most of those who went through the doors on 4th September 1990 had never seen anything like it. As well as being the second biggest shopping centre in the country at the time, it also laid claim to the biggest retail car park in the world and the UK’s biggest roof. Here was an attempt to surpass the nation’s great cathedrals; it’s hard to look at Meadowhall’s central dome and not see an attempt to echo St Paul’s. 

But from the very beginning, Meadowhall divided opinions. BBC Radio Sheffield recordings from the time show that questions about the impact on the city centre being asked early on. As the first decade of Meadowhall wore on, more and more concerns were raised, something you can see in the national planning guidance. 

In 1988 (two years before Meadowhall’s opening) the government took an attitude somewhere between relaxed and positive:

Retailing developments which extend choice in shopping, allow more efficient retailing, enable a better service to be given to the public as a whole and make shopping more pleasant are to be welcomed.

But by 1996, things looked completely different:

Experience has shown that new regional shopping centres… can have a substantial impact over a wide area and severely harm the nearest major [town and city] centres.

While they don’t name Meadowhall’s impact on retail in Sheffield and Rotherham, it’s almost certain it was part of the reason they’d soured on shopping centres.

That’s because at this stage shopping was the core business of city centres – especially ones with few offices, like Sheffield. Vacancy rates soared in the city and other South Yorkshire towns.

Back at Meadowhall, the relationship between Sykes and Healey remained fractious. There was little interaction, with Healey taking on the main day-to-day running of the centre. They agreed they’d sell once it was worth more than a billion pounds, and eventually got £1.2bn for it in 1999, selling up to British Land.

British Land, in turn, sold half of the site to the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund in 2012 – this time, valuing the centre at a stunning £1.5bn. By 2015, a report commissioned by British Land found that 1p in every pound of the Sheffield city region economy stemmed from Meadowhall (the figure would be higher for Sheffield alone). 1 in every 100 jobs was based there. There could be no question as to who had won in the city’s great retail rivalry. Meadowhall reigned supreme. 

Big retail goes sour

But everything changes, and big retail is no exception to the rule. Fast forward to the present and suddenly, everything was topsy turvy, with the big players looking in a much worse state. British Land is one of the biggest players in the sector, and their share price is a good guide to the current state of the market. It’s currently hovering at its lowest levels in five years — now only about half of what it was in early 2019. Though the stock initially made a recovery after the pandemic, by mid-2022 it was on the slide again, taking the company out of the FTSE 100.

British Land share price

When I speak to Josh Holmes, Senior Consultant at Retail Economics, to explain, he’s pretty sober about the prospects of shopping centres in general. “Visitor numbers have dwindled, rents have dropped, and capital values have taken a hit. Many investors have been burnt in the process, and understandably they remain wary, resulting in lower investment volumes and a substantial repricing of shopping centre assets over the past five years”, he tells me. 

So what’s happening on the ground? Darren Pearce, Centre Director at Meadowhall flashes me a smile as he greets me for a tour of the centre. He’s charming (“I don’t know if you’re a cyclist? You look like a cyclist”) and keen to convey that, despite having worked at Meadowhall for almost thirty years, he’s not stuck in the past. No, he gets that times are changing. “Physical real estate – there’s too much of it. Fact.” 

He anticipates my follow-up question about the impact of online retail, arguing that a “flexible model” is the answer — shops shouldn’t try to push back against online but “embrace” it. He shows me Meadowhall’s “click and collect” hub, where people can order into the store, try things on in the changing rooms, and if they don’t fit, send them back without the usual hassle. (When I mention this to friends later, the idea is very warmly received).

He admits that the Covid hangover still lingers, with visitor numbers still not where they were before. But it’s not all bad — footfall is increasing, and he claims that despite the cost of living crisis, people are keen to spend. Coming out of the pandemic there was a big boost in people buying luxury goods with the funds they’d saved up. “My God, people bought a lot of expensive watches”, he recalls.

“Clean, safe, friendly”, is how he describes his philosophy — one he says he inherited from the co-founder, Eddie Healey. “It’s immaculate”, he tells me a few times, and it’s hard to disagree. I point out an art display with thousands of steel leaves hanging from the ceiling and he tells me each one regularly gets taken down and individually dusted. Meadowhall was spruced up a lot five years ago, and while its age is still apparent from the outside, inside it’s much softer, tastefully decorated with pine wood slats and white geometric panelling. He’s also trying to drive family experiences as a major way to get people in.

Unsurprisingly, he’s keen to defuse any sense of tension with the city centre, describing it as a “complementary offer”, with the city centre offering more in the way of culture and leisure (“Mrs Pearce wouldn’t come out here for a dining experience at night”, he concedes). He clearly finds the suggestion that Meadowhall is out to do the city down irritating, citing examples of partnerships with charities and his own former role as President of Sheffield’s Chamber of Commerce.

To Pearce’s credit, the tour he gives me takes in the dead end of the shopping centre, where Topshop and Debenhams were previously. But he tells me that a new Frasers store is coming in their place, which will also integrate Mike Ashley’s other brands — Sports Direct and Evans cycles. He’s also promising a big expansion of the Zara store, and the arrival of several other brands he’s not yet in a position to announce. 

So if there’s no difficulty finding shops to fill Meadowhall, why is it worth so much less than it was? According to investment company Schroders, commercial property values have fallen across the board as a result of “the rise in interest rates and an adverse switch in investor sentiment, rather than a fall in occupier demand and rents”. I can’t persuade Pearce to speak to this — it’s a question for British Land, I’m told (they choose not to provide a comment). 

However, a look at the accounts for Meadowhall Finance PLC show that once repayments on the debt are accounted for, the site is only making a few thousands of pounds a year. There’s around £450 million of debt secured against it. Small wonder, then, that British Land is looking to shift it. Indeed, the company’s whole strategy has changed. According to the retail section of their website, they are now “targeting high-demand locations within the M25”. And they’re investing in retail parks, rather than shopping centres — think of those large car parks surrounded by the likes of Argos, B&Q, the Range, etc.

Shopping centre vs city centre?

The relationship between shopping centre and city centre has always been an uneasy one. The well-worn “Meadowhell” epithet conveys, for many, the experience of visiting the centre, but perhaps there’s a darker undercurrent; the sense that Sheffield is in some way cursed by its presence. Find pretty much anything ailing the city centre, and people will queue up to blame Meadowhall. Empty units on Fargate? Meadowhall. The closure of John Lewis? Meadowhall. Meadowhall’s advantages, especially in how easy it is to get there, with strong road, rail, and tram connections, have indisputably made it harder for the city centre to compete. 

But that analysis is, at best, incomplete. Sheffield isn’t the only big city to have a major retail park on its doorstep — Manchester’s Trafford Centre follows a similar template without such obvious collateral damage. I’ve often wondered if geography is a factor — with Sheffield sandwiched between the large retail catchments of Manchester, Leeds, and Nottingham. And Sheffield’s economy as a whole has proven less resilient to industrial change than our larger neighbours, with fewer office jobs to prop the city centre up. Perhaps there are just fewer pounds to go round.

That scarcity has created a tension that doesn’t exist in other cities. One flashpoint was the decision on where a HS2 station should go, with Meadowhall initially chosen. That was vigorously opposed by the city council, eventually prompting a change in the decision – much to the chagrin of the leaders of other South Yorkshire councils (all academic now, of course).

But more recently — and most relevantly, for British Land’s decision — has been the debate over Meadowhall’s growth plans. A planning application for a huge expansion of leisure space was refused in 2021 due to the anticipated impact on the city centre. A revised application which halved the size of the leisure development, and put the opening back until 2029, was later given the go ahead (in spite of some continued opposition). But that doesn’t seem to have been enough to persuade British Land to hang onto the centre.

A new kind of city centre

When I arrived in Sheffield in 2016, the centre was full of examples of retail gone south — most obviously in Castlegate, where I was working. I regularly walked past the sad frontage of Castle House on my way to the office. “We’re in the arse end of town”, as my boss at the time memorably put it. But if Meadowhall’s fortunes have been rocky in the last couple of years, the city centre’s have been — quietly — rising. It’s less a case of one big thing, but many small things, which over time are beginning to add up. 

Exhibit A: Fitzalan Square. I remember it as grimy and unpleasant; ringed by betting shops. Now, the central square has been redesigned to bring in grass and flowers, it’s cleaner, and hosts businesses like the Fred Aldous arts and crafts shop and independent cafe Hygge. Then there’s the area around the back of Decathlon – where many of the “little mesters” were based. Again, it was pretty run down seven years ago. Now it contains a gamut of independent businesses: Birdhouse, Industry Tap, Sidney&Matilda, several art galleries and the Jaywing creative agency. Or take Orchard Square. Once a fairly dingy shopping precinct, it’s now a colourful, attractive space, with a food court, independent print company, and the Old Shoe bar selling locally made cider. 

I could also cite the former no man's land between Division Street and Charter Row. The new Pound’s Park has created a focal point that isn’t retail-based, which has been thronging with families over the summer holidays. 

The pattern has been the same: there’s investment, and very quickly the independents start moving in. The result is that Sheffield city centre is becoming more varied, less predictable. If I had to pick between 2016’s city centre and today’s, I wouldn’t hesitate to go for the latter. 

At this point, my naysayers’ response could probably be summed up in two words: John Lewis. (Ok, and maybe a third: Debenhams). And yes, if you judge Sheffield’s city centre by the traditional criteria — the presence of big name department stores — it’s a failure, with only M&S still clinging on. 

But how valid are those criteria these days? There have been many reports into what can be done to save UK high streets, but they all tend to agree on one thing: if high streets want to survive, they need to offer something unique — something that can’t be purchased online.

One comment from a reader on our Twitter poll got me thinking. Regular contributor Helen Matthews told us that, while she didn’t like out of town shopping centres as a rule, she was glad that Meadowhall “leaves the city centre for people who aren't obsessed with high street chains”.

If the future of city centres is small and independent, is it just — just — possible that in the long-run Meadowhall might have done Sheffield city centre a favour? By taking out some of the big retail and leaving it free for more interesting things to proliferate in its place? Is Meadowhall the Professor Snape of this great retail drama – believed by many to be evil for years, only to turn out to have been working for good all along?

That’s a pretty bold hypothesis; it’s probably too early to stack it up. We’ll probably have to wait until all the workmen have packed up and give it a few years before finally judging the city centre’s revival. But the fact it’s not a completely laughable idea says a lot about how the local retail landscape has changed. Perhaps a vibrant city centre and a bustling Meadowhall can co-exist, after all.

The cult of the mega mall

The enduring cultural power of Meadowhall remains. In her breakout Glastonbury set last year, singer Self Esteem (real name Rebecca Lucy Taylor) performed dressed as the shopping centre itself, with bra cups in the shape of its famous dome. Later recounting her experience growing up in Rotherham, she described “losing her tiny mind” over the place. “[The] Americanised shopping mall has always excited me since”, she said.

But others view the mega-mall concept with much more suspicion. Their number includes — surprisingly — Paul Sykes. The man who first saw the potential in a derelict patch of land in Tinsley came to rue his involvement. By the early noughties, he had decided that consumerism was getting out of control, becoming increasingly conscious of the damage that voracious retail habits were doing to the planet. “He regretted ever building Meadowhall”, one source close to Sykes tells us. Now living on Jersey, he uses his wealth to fund Greenpeace projects that protect tropical rainforests, and counts persuading the government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines to ban hunting for sea turtles as one of his major achievements.

Ultimately, your view on Meadowhall probably depends on one simple variable: how much you like to shop. Among those I talk to while I’m at the centre, there’s a range of opinions. “It’s a nice vibe”, says Alex, who is visiting with her partner Val and friends for a day out. I ask one man, who leans on a balustrade, gazing vacantly into the middle distance why he’s here. “Missus. New clothes. That’s it.” 

But I think it’s Janet, sitting outside Greggs with her daughter Danielle, who probably speaks for the majority. “I like it for so long. Then I’ve had enough.”