LEITH’S Ocean Terminal may have suffered low occupancy rates and visitor numbers since it opened in October 2001, but Terry Smith, property director of Forth Ports, believes the forthcoming International Festival of the Sea will provide the shopping mall with a much-needed boost.
"The opening of Ocean Terminal coincided with a dip in retailing around the country," Mr Smith explains as he puts the finishing touches to Forth Ports’ plans for the four-day maritime festival, which arrives in Leith on Friday.
"If we look at Ha
rvey Nichols as an example, 23 shop units were built on The Walk alongside the store, and they were all hoped to be full by the time Harvey Nichols opened. But at the moment only one, Louis Vuitton, is occupied."
He adds: "I’m not running that development down, but it’s a sign of the general downturn."
While Ocean Terminal is still some way off being fully occupied, the centre has signed up a number of new high street names in recent weeks, including fashion chain French Connection - which has taken two adjacent units - Marks & Spencer, all:sports and Boots.
Baxters, the family-owned Scottish food group, will open its first outlet away from its Fochabers headquarters in the summer, and Forth Ports is currently in talks to bring a "major bookstore" to the centre, but Mr Smith is unable to name the chain until the legal paperwork has been signed.
Mr Smith says he expects Ocean Terminal to be fully let within the next 12 months. "The building is moving at a very encouraging pace," he says.
"People who might have heard the centre is very quiet will get a nice surprise when they come next weekend."
He adds: "At the moment there’s more than 100,000 people a week coming to Ocean Terminal, and that will probably double to 200,000 during the festival."
Mike Richmond, managing director of the International Festival of the Sea, says "a couple of hundred" craft are currently expected to descend on Leith, "but that figure is creeping up every day - people are showing a huge amount of interest".
"There will be a significant number of tall ships of every size, and there will also be traditional fishing craft," Mr Richmond says.
"We’re trying to create a true festival of the sea, so there will be everything from navy vessels, coracles and tall ships."
He adds: "In terms of the management, there’s currently around 60 people involved, but on show days we’ll have accredited up to 1000 people who will be working to help it all come together.
"A lot of them will be from Edinburgh, and I have 160 locals doing my site security."
But Mr Richmond confesses to being "a bit of a landlubber", and says he will not be taking to the sea. "Even the thought of going on a cross-channel ferry scares me," he admits.
"My skill is the event production and site management, so I’ll stay on the land while my team looks after the maritime activity. I might venture on to the odd tall ship, but only so long as it’s berthed."
While the temporary benefits of the festival are clear - an estimated £10 million will be generated for the local economy - Mr Richmond hopes to stage a repeat performance in the future.
"Whenever we visit a port, we tend to look at coming back, based on the performance. Major events are part and parcel of Edinburgh, and I’d certainly like to come back to the city."
Mr Richmond says the organisers of the festival have tried to call on the services of as many local firms as possible.
"There’s no point parachuting an event in - we have to get the local community enthused," he explains.
"There is a Scottish twist to this particular festival, in that we’re using a lot of the creative skills here to help create the show."
Mr Richmond first became involved with the International Festival of the Sea when it docked in Bristol in 1996, where he was brought in as staging and production manager.
He moved up to events director for the Portsmouth event in 1998, and has now been promoted to managing director.
"The planning for the visit to Leith started 18 months ago, when we looked at the site to see if it was possible to produce a show of this type," Mr Richmond says.
"It’s not just a land show, because is involves a huge amount of water, obviously. In essence, we’ve been getting busier all the time, and the scale of activity has risen dramatically in the past few months."
As owner of the port of Leith, Forth Ports is acting as the festival’s landlord, and Mr Smith says the event is the culmination of almost five years’ planning, which began with the successful bid to bring the Royal Yacht Britannia to the area.
"As part of the regeneration of the port, we’ve been planning to hold a major event for some years, purely to make Edinburgh’s waterfront match those of other capitals around the world," Mr Smith explains.
"It all started when we won the bid for Britannia, because that put Leith in the public gaze. As part of our bid, we put forward a proposal for ten years of celebrations around the yacht. One of the events we pencilled in as part of that was to bring the festival of the sea to Leith."
Britannia is forming the centrepiece of the festival, while Ocean Terminal - which houses the yacht’s visitor centre - is also playing a key role in providing an outlet for visitors to stretch their wallets.
"It’s looking very good for Ocean Terminal," says Mr Smith. "The important thing is we’re doing deals every week, and retailers looking at a move to Edinburgh really do want to be here."
The Cutty Sark Tall Ships Race brought more than one million people to Leith in 1995, and Mr Smith says that event was instrumental in kick-starting the area’s regeneration into a stylish waterfront location for shops, restaurants and homes.
"The festival of the sea should have a similar effect, because it will act as a showcase for what could be described as the finished article," he adds.
Other than an increase in visitor numbers to Ocean Terminal, Mr Smith says Forth Ports will make no direct financial gain from the festival, because it will receive none of the ticket revenues.
"But that’s fine by us, because we didn’t set out to make a profit from the festival," he stresses. "Having said that, it has helped us significantly, because we’ve landed the MTV Europe Music Awards, which are coming to Leith in November.
"If we didn’t have the festival of the sea, we might not have secured that."
Forth Ports is building a temporary 7000-seat venue, right next to Ocean Terminal, for the MTV awards, which are set to be broadcast to an estimated one billion people across the world, putting Leith firmly in the spotlight.
With stars such as Madonna, Eminem and Kylie Minogue tipped to be among the performers, the event will be one of the hottest tickets of the year, and Mr Smith says he hopes to have a front row seat.
He adds: "Edinburgh is a waterfront city, and this is useful to show people there’s more to Edinburgh than just Princes Street."
