Northern Ireland’s newest Primark store is preparing to open in the shopping centre by the end of the year
The owners of a Co Antrim shopping centre are aiming to restore the town’s historic status as a shopping destination with its major redevelopment project.
Back in 2021, Magmel (Ballymena) Limited bought over the Fairhill Shopping Centre in the heart of Ballymena town – since then, the company has embarked on a £10million transformation project.
From a fresh rebrand earlier to an internal revamp of the storefronts and mall to building a new 26,100-square-foot unit for Primark, owner Ryan Walker says this is just the beginning for the centre.
READ MORE: Primark Ballymena: Fairhill Shopping Centre shares update on opening of NI’s newest storeREAD MORE: Ballymena shopping centre undergoing almost £10m transformation ahead of new Primark opening
Ryan, who grew up in Ballymena himself, told Belfast Live that when the Fairhill Shopping Centre initially came onto the market, they never expected it to actually become their next project.
He said: “The centre back in 2021 wasn’t a very vibrant place – it was pretty tired and there was a lot of vacancy and it wasn’t the prettiest it ever looked.
“I suppose there was something in me that just kind of niggled a wee bit, and I thought there was still a heartbeat in the place that we could revive.
“A large part that was probably down to Marks and Spencer’s being here because I saw them as pivotal in terms of that ability to turn it around – we spent a bit of time looking at it and then fast forward a few months, we did buy it.
“That was August 2021, so it was just after Covid and there was a lot of uncertainty in the retail market, a lot of people were quite nervous about what lay ahead, so it was a wee bit daunting at that stage.”
Ryan said that when the company acquired Fairhill, they knew they needed to do something “radical” to give the centre new life, and soon ended up with Primark, one of Northern Ireland’s most popular retailers, as a new tenant.
Magmel knocked down a third of the centre, which housed the former Debenhams unit, to facilitate the new retail space for Primark. With the site handed over to Primark back in July, Ryan predicts the first customers will be able to shop in the new store by early December.
“Whenever we secured Primark, we also looked around the centre and we realised, the place was a bit dated and tired inside, so we probably need to spend some money to modernise it.
“We then went on in this campaign of what do we need to do to modernise the place and that led to the internal works project being done as well,” Ryan continued.
The inside transformation included new floor tiles, state-of-the-art lighting, updated elevations and enhanced storefronts alongside a brand refresh, which was revealed last month.
On the reaction the internal revamp has received so far, he added: “It’s lovely actually – you get a lot of people coming up and saying to me it’s looking really fantastic.
“You see people walking in who haven’t been in for a while and they’re like ‘ oh wow this is all new’ so it’s nice and I think it does make it a nicer place for people to come to.
“You come in the door and it’s nice and bright, it’s new surroundings – just a lot nicer environment to be in, so it’s been very warmly received and both from customers and retailers.”
Primark will mark a “new beginning” for Fairhill, as Ryan explained, and will hopefully attract other big names to open in Ballymena in the near future.
He added that he believes people will make the journey to shop in the new Primark, which will give not only a boost to Fairhill, but also the other centres and high street shops in the town.
Ryan explained: “I have a phrase that I think is true and it’s ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’ – the more people that come to a town to shop, they’re not just going to come to the centre. They will park the car, they will walk the streets, they’ll go up the town, they’ll eat and they’ll drink.
“I don’t think high street retailers in the town have anything to worry about with what’s happening at Fairhill, quite the opposite.
“I think it’s a real positive and if what we’ve done here means somebody in Cookstown says ‘let’s go to Ballymena for the day, I’d love to see the new Primark’, everybody’s a winner out of that.
“They’ll travel, they will spend the afternoon in the town, so it can’t be bad for anybody as far as I’m concerned.”
He continued: “The Ballymena I grew up in was known for shopping – it was the Saturday shopping trip and you would have seen lots of people coming to the town for it.
“That was always in the back of my mind that was something that had left the town and I thought there’s no reason why that couldn’t be revived.
“I thought there’s no reason why we couldn’t make Fairhill that go-to shopping hub and destination and I think that’s what we will achieve.”
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