An independent business owner in Cabot Circus has said he wants to move his business after losing thousands of pounds since the start of the year. Independent store Mila Plants swapped his Quakers Friars location for the shopping centre in January but says it has lost footfall, which it claims is related to noisy, obstructive renovation work at a neighbouring unit.
Owner of Mila Plants, Sam McKay, said revenue has halved since they arrived at the shopping centre, having been invited to move from their previous pop-up nearby. He believes the dip in trade is predominantly due to the works at the bank next door, which closed for refurbishment just before Mila Plants reopened.
Sam said he was unaware of the upcoming building work and that the hoarding erected outside of the bank was between 1.5m to 2m in depth and “completely blocked the view of the shop” from the main entrance. His frustration is not with the bank but with the shopping centre's owner Hammerson, claiming he was not made aware of the works prior to moving in.
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He said: “From day one we’ve taken half of the sales than we did at our old store. The footfall was awful and it was only compounded by the fact that Nationwide was closed and blocking the view of it so much. When we did get customers in, all day long there was drilling and banging.”
Hammerson confirmed hoardings are only normally permitted to come out 1m from the shop front but 1.5m was authorised, as at the time both units on either side were vacant and Nationwide needed additional room.
During the refurbishment, the ceiling collapsed in the store’s staff toilet in February. The issue was resolved by Nationwide and Hammerson within half a day and the refurbishment ended on March 20, after eight weeks of work.
Sam praised the team at Cabot Circus but was less complimentary about the support his business has received from the shopping centre's owner Hammerson. Hammerson said in response to his concerns that it has "proudly incubated and championed local and independent brands" and will "continue to support them".
Sam said: “The guys that are on the ground running Cabot Circus are phenomenal. They are working so hard to make sure Cabot Circus is part of a Bristol community. They want to support indies and they’ve done nothing but support us from the beginning.”
Hammerson is a London-based property developer that owns Cabot Circus and Quakers Friars, home to a mixture of major retailers and independent brands. Sam claims they were asked to move out of the original site in Quakers Friars, but Hammerson has refuted this, instead stating that Mila Plants requested a new location “for financial reasons”.
Sam first launched Mila Plants in 2020 after he was furloughed from his job in the hospitality industry. Plants had been a lifelong hobby but it became his full-time job after seeing success at a market stall in St Nick’s at Bristol Indies Market every Saturday, where he sold out every week.
Sam recalled how he was approached by Cabot Circus to open a pop-up shop in December 2020, when he took on Mila Plants full-time, debuting in Quakers Friars that month. Mila Plants, which is named after Sam's little girl, has since grown to a second site on Park Street and Sam also owns Mila Coffee in Cabot Circus.
According to Sam, he first discovered he was being asked to relocate from Quakers Friars when prospective clients turned up to view the unit. He claimed: “Hammerson hadn’t said to us at all that there was a prospective client. Because we’re a pop up we’re just a space filler, we’ve always known that we would leave when a full-time client comes along.
“It was always told to us that they would approach us first to say someone was interested. It was really embarrassing because my staff actually heard and immediately thought we were going to lose their jobs. That was a fire that I had to put out.” Hammerson has disputed this, stating it did not engage another occupier until Mila indicated that they wanted to vacate their unit.
Mila Plants was initially offered a space on Penns Street in the former Everyman Barber, which Sam said was not suitable because it was “badly dilapidated”. He accepted another unit in Cabot Circus with three months' free rent, paying insurance and increased service charges, but the shopping centre indicated there would be a higher footfall at the new location to help mitigate these costs.
Cancelled workshops
Due to the noise disruption from drilling from the renovations next door, Sam had to cancel some of his Saturday daytime workshops. He estimates a loss of between £5,000-8,000 from cancelled workshops as well as between £1,500-£4,000 lost in revenue per week from sales during the eight-week refurbishment period.
“This is going to stay with us for a long time. I’ve had to take out a loan so I can pay the bills because we’ve suffered so much moving into this location,” he explained.
In documents from Hammerson Site Constraints manual seen by BristolLive, while it states that 24 hour working hours are permitted, it says “all noisy works are to be undertaken ‘out of hours’”. Hammerson said this would cover "very noisy or disturbing works", giving examples including drilling into concrete slabs or steel beams, which they request are carried out out of hours. A spokesperson added: "We have not received any other complaints from any other tenant regarding the Nationwide fit out."
A spokesperson for Hammerson said: “At Cabot Circus we have proudly incubated and championed local and independent brands, enabling them to grow their businesses through prime retail and leisure space in the heart of Bristol.
"Since 2020, we have worked with the team at Mila to build brand awareness as well as its customer base, by supporting them as they expanded with additional stores and offerings in Cabot Circus. Last year, Mila Plants requested a new location to meet their business needs and we were able to offer them several units including the current store near to Mila Coffee which trades well. We will continue to engage with the brand to support them and explore options.”
However, Sam said he is now looking to leave Cabot Circus having only relocated in January. “It’s done so much damage that it cannot improve. We’re making steps to be part of a new project in the city centre, Sparks, which is taking over the old Marks and Spencer's.”
The empty Marks and Spencer department store in Broadmead is to be transformed into an ‘arts and sustainability hub’ after two local organisations signed a deal with Bristol City Council to use the building. Called ‘Sparks Bristol’, those behind the project said their ambition is to create a ‘vibrant, positive venue where local people and visitors can shop, recycle and explore what a greener, fairer and creative future could look like’.
Sam added: “The entire ethos of my business is that we do good for the local community. We buy goods from the community and every single penny we earn as a business goes back into the local community, be that through staff wages or through the producers we use.”
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