With the ticker-tape pomp and circumstance usually reserved for armies returning from war, Westfield Stratford threw open its doors with a flourish yesterday.
The opening ceremony of Europe’s largest shopping centre proved a curious melange of the glamorous and the mundane.
Former Pussycat Dolls singer Nicole Scherzinger’s frisson of Hollywood glitz faded slightly as she sashayed down an escalator past a branch of Sports Direct.
Landmark: Thousands flocked to the opening of the Stratford mall
London Mayor Boris Johnson provided the comic turn, christening the £1.45billion retail behemoth with a risqué joke about scandal-hit former IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
Even now, Boris said, the streets of Paris are alive with talk of ‘Le Westfield’ and the opportunity it offers for French financial politicians to placate their wives with a discounted Hermes scarf.
But while the opening ceremony sailed by jauntily, doubts linger about the viability of this vast temple of consumerism.
The firm had to offer massive rent discounts to lure retailers to Westfield London and property experts believe it has done the same to entice the 250 retailers and 70 food outlets at Stratford.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, the chief executive of one of Britain’s largest retailers expressed private doubts about whether Westfield Stratford could keep attracting crowds after the Olympics.
Previous host cities, Athens a prime example, have been saddled with crumbling ghost towns that don’t offer much hope for a thriving community of potential shoppers in East London.
Frank Lowy, the Hungarian-born entrepreneur behind Westfield, has no such qualms.
In a brief speech, he recalled the disbelief that greeted him when he opened Westfield in Shepherd’s Bush, just as the economy was heading into recession.
That centre is now doing a roaring trade, he pointed out, defying all the critics.
Its Stratford sister expects to match its predecessor by pulling in a £700m turnover in the first year and £1bn a year by 2014.
Yet the gulf between Shepherd’s Bush and Stratford is more than just geographical. London’s other Westfield can draw on a densely-populated district containing several affluent, recession-resistant postcodes.
Stratford does not have that luxury. The flip side of that coin is that a successful Westfield Stratford spells bad news for the shopkeepers of Newham.
Unless local retailers have a hotline to Boris or a Pussycat Doll, Westfield’s vast shadow could starve them of much-needed light.
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