Ikea opens first city centre shopping mall in west London
When Ikea bought the former Kings Mall two years ago, more than a quarter of stores in the run-down Hammersmith shopping centre stood empty.
On Thursday, the Swedish furniture giant’s £170m experiment on the west London shopping mall will be tested with the opening of Livat, its first city centre shopping mall globally and the first to be refurbished rather than built from scratch.
While Ikea has 47 other shopping centres worldwide, at 37,000sq metres Livat is just over a third of the size of its typical site and its first in the UK. Livat also houses Ikea’s only high street store in the UK – which is a quarter the size of a typical store.
The former Kings Mall is now fully let, with new tenants including German discount supermarket Lidl, a Library of Things (a social enterprise) and Sook, the rent-by-the hour retail or events space, alongside an Ikea’s outlet.
“This is the first step on our journey to develop more city centre locations,” said Cindy Andersen, managing director of Ikea’s property arm Ingka Centres, which bought the 1980s site. “This was a perfect opportunity to refurbish and existing location which has been established for a long time and taking the next step to put some new energy into the place.”
The mall, which Ikea spent £170m on buying and redeveloping, will include a small market hall for local food pop-ups alongside Ikea’s own Swedish Deli and two further cafes offering meatballs, open sandwiches and coffees.
Brightly coloured seating on a stairway below a repaved atrium will lead to a locally run cafe above the mall, which sits beside a revamped outdoor space for council tenants in the residential block above, with a wildflower meadow, seating and planters.
The project is a bold bet on a post-Covid
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