The City of London could be transformed into a seven days a week shopping destination to rival that of popular West End locations, with plans to create as much as 1.5m sq ft of retail space – equivalent to the Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd's Bush.
Retailers are keen to open stores in an area that not only boasts some of the wealthiest people in the country during the week, but also has the potential for strong weekend trade from surrounding neighbourhoods and tourists attracted to two of the capital's top destinations, St Paul's Cathedral and the Tate Modern. Canary Wharf has shown that office locations can also serve as large shopping areas, as they have done in many other global capitals.
The latest plans will see a revamp of the shopping around Broadgate, one of the largest schemes to emerge from the 1980s development boom. It follows the part-sale of the estate to Blackstone, the US private equity giant, by British Land last summer.