News of Dundee getting a new Frasers department store has got tongues wagging up the A90 in Aberdeen.
Could Frasers Group – whose brands include Frasers, House of Fraser, USC, Game, Sports Direct and Evans Cycles – follow suit and announce a similar opening in the Granite City?
Dundee was a relatively easier option for a new Frasers, compared with Aberdeen.
Overgate acquisition paved the way for new Frasers store
Frasers Group acquired Overgate Shopping Centre in Scotland’s fourth largest city earlier this year.
It is due to open a Frasers department store and several other brand outlets in the mall next year. About £5.5 million has been set aside to create the Frasers shop but this could be exceeded.
One Aberdeen-based property expert, who asked not to be named, said Frasers Group had done the same in other locations around the UK – buying city centre shopping centres and then installing its own brands.
Frasers Group has missed or chosen not to pursue similar opportunities in Aberdeen.
It could have made a move for the Bon Accord Centre, which was acquired by EP Properties in a multi-million-pound deal earlier this year. EP Properties, led by Zakir Issa – brother of Mohsin and Zuber Issa, who own Asda in a joint venture with TDR Capital – is thought to have bought the mall from administrators for less than £10m.
It is not known whether Frasers Group made a bid.
More recently, EP Properties swooped to buy the old John Lewis department store on George Street at a knockdown price of just over £270,000.
Aberdeen Multicultural Centre and Aberdeen Climate Action have proposed turning part of it into a continental-style indoor produce market.
Another city centre shopping centre changed hands this year. In July it emerged that Robert Keane, who runs the Douglas Hotel, together with partner Mary Martin, had bought the Trinity Centre from Austrian bank Bawag.
Again, it is not known whether Frasers Group made a bid.
The former Debenhams store in the mall is still mostly vacant.
One flagship option for Frasers Group remains – Union Square, which property giant Hammerson has been trying to sell.
It is more than a year since reports said Union Square was being sold to property investor Brookfield, owner of London’s Canary Wharf development, in a £140m deal.
But the transaction fell through, leaving the future ownership of Aberdeen’s largest shopping centre up in the air.
Retail expert says former John Lewis store may be option for Fraser Group
Andrew Turnbull, senior lecturer in retail and marketing at Robert Gordon University, said “all the pieces of the jigsaw were available” to Frasers Group in Dundee.
He added: “Clearly, the model to be employed there is one that has been successful elsewhere, so there is every reason to think it will work.
“Is there anywhere suitable in Aberdeen? The empty John Lewis site on George Street, linking to the Bon Accord Centre, has been acquired but may offer such an opportunity.”
Frasers Group, controlled by retail billionaire and former Newcastle United Football Club owner Mike Ashley, sold Berryden retail park in Aberdeen earlier this year. The site was acquired, along with other UK retail properties, by California-based Realty Income for an undisclosed sum.
Derbyshire-based Frasers Group already has a presence in Aberdeen through some of its brands.
But the Frasers name has been absent from the Granite City’s retail offering since August 2016, when a House of Fraser “concept store” in Union Square closed down.
Opened in October 2011, the buy-and-collect shop was the first House of Fraser in the city in nearly nine years. The prestigious brand previously had a department store on Union Street for many years but it shut in January 2003, with more than 100 job losses.
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