A busman’s holiday: from shopping centres to Fine Toad

When I started out working as a property solicitor my work was predominantly working on leases at shopping centres and as most were located in the North West I spent a lot of time travelling up to Manchester and surrounding towns to visit them. Until today I had never actually visited the Arndale Centre in Manchester. Obviously, I cannot go away without it becoming a bit of a busman’s holiday so I dragged my son through the city centre and around the shopping centre. It was lovely to see a shopping destination so busy and buzzing with an amazing mix of uses. There are probably a lot more food outlets than would have been thought of as a balanced “tenant mix”15 years ago, but times have changed and Manchester has definitely changed with them.

What I like particularly about the “Arndale” concept is the incorporation of an old fashioned market within the shopping centre and this has been retained in Manchester. I remember going to the Arndale shopping centre in Bradford as a child and being fascinated by the colours and vibrancy and mish mash of stalls in the market part of the shopping centre.

It is this vibrancy that I hope we will be able to recreate in Fine Toad, something to catch the attention of everyone, something to make people visit again and again to see what has changed, to capture the imagination and to help small businesses thrive.

By Eleanor