Europe’s Largest White Elephant?

In today’s Times, author John Naish savagely mocks the Australian company Westfield, who have timed the opening of their mega-mall in Shepherds Bush (AKA ‘A New Icon in UK Retail’) with the biggest crunch on shoppers’ disposable income since the Great Depression of 1929-1931. “They should cheer up,” says Naish, “Their emporia are ripe for relaunching as monolithic museums, vacant temples to the lost rites of rampant consumption.” Indeed, it looks like ‘Europe’s Largest Shopping Centre’ could prove the UK’s most ridiculous white elephant since the pre-O2 Millenium Dome, as London’s debt-happy shoppers finally start to look beyond their Gucci handbags and focus on where the next paycheck is coming from. 

 “The joy’s gone out of it,” scoffs Naish, perhaps banging a copy of Das Kapital on his desk in amusement. “Mimicking Posh’n’Becks-style conspicuous consumption is no longer harmless fun; we’ve wised up to the fact that it’s a toxic contagion that is landing millions of us on our financial arses.” (He then unveils a theory about how retailers have been manipulating the brain’s “reward chemical” dopamine to make consumers buy stuff, which is so completely bonkers it may well be true – but I digress…)

For those who haven’t seen the upper-middle class aspirant monstrosity that is Westfield London, it’s situated by the Westway A40 flyover, cost an estimated £1.6 billion, and looks a bit like this…

Yeuch. Covering 1,610,000 square feet, it open on October 30 with 265 stores, including Lacoste, Louis Vuitton, and Thomas Pink, and luxury spas, valet parking, and no food market to lower the tone. Westfield, who were investigated for corruption by an independent commission in Australia for their role in the closure of a rival shopping centre in New South Wales (and cleared), and who won the contract to build the athlete’s Olympic Village at London 2012, are hoping that the shopping centre’s Shepherds Bush locale will lure well heeled shoppers away from their usual ‘Saw you coming’ Kensington and Chelsea haunts. Good luck with that one chaps! Because you can bet your last Australian dollar the rest of us won’t be able to afford an outing… 

Posted by Jack Roberts in Hot Money | October 23, 2008 12:11PM |