Weekend Interview: Eurofund CEO Ian Sandford On Why There Is All To Play For In Retail

This series goes deep with some of the most compelling figures in commercial real estate: the deal-makers, the game-changers, the city-shapers and the larger-than-life personalities who keep CRE interesting.

You've reinvented retail once. Now go out and do it again. 

Madrid-based Eurofund Group President Ian Sandford was one of the pioneers in creating retail-led destinations that moved the dial beyond simply shopping. He headed a development team that delivered a huge lifestyle centre in Zaragoza, Spain, called Puerto Venecia, which features a large lake, more than 50 restaurants, expansive leisure, an adjacent retail park and a large Ikea.

Developed before the internet and when malls typically focused purely on the top rent-paying retailers, the project set a high bar in reframing what consumers could expect from a trip to a shopping centre and remains a model of how developments and redevelopments are handled.

Originally from the UK, Sandford has lived in Alicante, Zaragoza and now Madrid as he has grown the business to own and develop retail, logistics and living schemes in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany and the UK, with the company making its name as a hands-on investor focused on detailed operational plans to transform the schemes it acquires.

Speaking to Bisnow, Sandford discussed how the company has evolved into multiple asset classes, the future of retail investment, and how to get away from it all with family, football, basketball and a cold Spanish beer.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Bisnow: You were early to recognise the importance of leisure and F&B in Zaragoza. What led you to that decision?

Sandford: I've had quite a few people ask me why we did it, and rationalising, I was trying to think of somewhere where I would like to spend time with my family. And what would everybody want as part of that?

My wife loves shopping in Zara. But if I go there, I don't want to be sitting, waiting. I want to be sitting by the side of the lake, watching a game of football with a beer, with my kids on the surf machine. And after that, then what? What makes you want to stay is food and beverage. I remember a conversation with Ikea, which opened before the retail park and the shopping centre [at Puerto Venecia]. They reckoned that once the retail park opened, their total sales would stay the same, and when we opened the shopping centre, sales would fall because people had far more options.

Actually, sales increased. One of the reasons, I believe, is that up until then, if you ever wanted to stay in an Ikea for a long period of time, you had to like Swedish meatballs. Suddenly we were putting in a 25-metre walk across a lovely little walkway, 50 restaurants, and I think it allowed customers to have a breather, have lunch and then go back again.

Bisnow: And how has that strategy evolved with more recent schemes?

Sandford: The main difference is that what was nice to have back then is essential now. When we designed assets, we weren't sitting there thinking about the internet. But for the first time, that meant people had a choice as to whether to go shopping or not. They could just sit at home on the iPad. We call it the battle of the Saturday morning breakfast table, when a family sits down together and decides what to do for the weekend, and we need to win that battle.

But the thing which I've learned now is we've got to be thinking about more and more uses to integrate within shopping centres, like we did with a hospital at UBBO in Portugal. I'm convinced we're going to have working within shopping centres because people are social animals, and the reason they don't go to the office is not because they don't want social interaction but because of journey times. It's not a coincidence that the biggest return to work is in Madrid, because it’s bloody easy to get around.

So if you could get coworking in locations which are convenient, with car parking and other facilities around them like gyms, food and beverage, hospitals, education, then we're going to see a lot of coworking at shopping centres — and that's the difference for me today.

F&B also remains really crucial. I call them human gas stations, for when we've run out of juice. So we create nice pockets around the centre. Today we call it breakout spaces — 10 years ago it was like, well, it's just a nice place to sit.

Bisnow: There has been a disconnect between improving operational performance at malls and their investment appeal. Why? And is that changing?

Sandford: Unfortunately, it's changing. Unfortunately because it's getting more difficult for us to acquire sensibly priced assets. We typically plan to buy a scheme to transform it, hold it for five years and sell it back into the market. That's going to be increasingly difficult.

I think investors have begun to understand the fundamentals, which are the things I have talked about for years: the consolidation of retail into great shopping centres, fewer locations, bigger stores, more experiential stores. And those top centres are performing really well. Just look at URW, Klepierre, Hammerson. Their figures are really good.

You can overthink and overanalyse everything. We sat down and looked from 2000 to 2024 at the top line of the investment market and the occupational market, and they pretty much coincide. Good investment market, good occupational. What happened this time when the occupational market recovered is that the investment market didn’t react.

Bisnow: How and why did you decide to invest in the UK?

Sandford: The opportunity for us was obvious. Unfortunately, things have gone against us, because Silverburn, Glasgow, has been a massive success, but for various reasons we haven’t been able to acquire a second or third centre. But the opportunity was obvious, and there are things which we bid on recently and we will be bidding on in the next little while. I still think there's the opportunity for transformations, and that's what we're good at. That's what we're set up for.

Bisnow: And where does Britain sit within opportunities across Europe?

Sandford: We have an expression, not to let strategy get in the way of a good opportunity. Germany was exactly that. We saw a very good opportunity. We didn't have a strategy to go to Germany, but we saw a very good opportunity and reacted. I also think there is going to be a lot more opportunity for us in Germany. That's one of my key markets. 

We were busy in Italy, and then Covid came along. And so we've had to put it all back together, and we've now acquired two centres and conditional contracts for another. In Málaga, we're trying to get planning consent for a new plan in liaison with the Intu receivers, conceived as a mixed-use scheme introducing a lot of residential, hotels and offices, because there is huge demand down on the Costa del Sol. 

Bisnow: You made your name as a hands-on investor in retail, so has it been difficult to expand into other property classes?

Sandford: The difference in my life today from 10 years ago is that I spend a lot more time on the business rather than on the projects. Bringing in Ion Saralegui as our group CEO has made a huge change in my life because it's allowed me to have a partner who can do a lot of detailed stuff, allowing me to concentrate on the value add.

And every two months, we go and spend two days away sitting in a countryside hotel, locking ourselves away. That's the best time we get to spend, and the agenda always starts with the same thing: the right people in the right place doing the right thing. For me, that's what has enabled us to grow. It’s fundamental, absolutely fundamental.

What it’s allowed us to do is broaden our horizons. From the logistics development side, it’s quite binary in terms of a piece of land, design, manage costs and maximise rents. The other two things we do are retail and now living in the UK, and we've just got two sites around Marbella, each of them for about 170 apartments in a retirement community. A lot of that comes back to placemaking. It comes back to creating community, and I think that's what we've been good at in shopping centres. So it's been a fairly easy transition. 

Bisnow: Tell us about how you came to live and work in Spain?

Sandford: I did the first B&Q DIY store overseas, which was just in Northern Ireland. And then another European DIY company asked if I could help with their overseas development. I’d only worked in Northern Ireland, with the same language and legal system. But at 26 years old, off I went to Spain.

Of course, the quality of life and marriage has kept me here. From where I live in Madrid, I can get to the airport in 10 minutes, and there's a 7 a.m. plane which takes me to London to be in the office at 9:30 a.m. There's an 8:50 p.m. plane back, so I can leave the office at 7 o'clock and be taking my son to school the next morning.

Bisnow: Give us a bold prediction for the rest of the year.

Sandford: England to win the Euros [this interview was just before the semifinal, which England won]. In real estate, we're in a bit of an awkward stage on interest rates. What I see as important is that money is going to have a cost. Therefore, you've got to have an active business plan if you're going to get outsized returns. That's behind the rise of the specialist operating partner.

Bisnow: What is your weekend routine or favourite weekend activity?

Sandford: I love to play football with my oldest son — I started off with the Woodley Wanderers as a kid. I love to watch football and watch my youngest son play basketball. And I love to go out for lunch and dinner with my wife and friends or with the family. Really simple. The big problem I've got is next year my youngest son is going to go to Florida to a basketball academy. I’ve been travelling around every weekend to watch him play, and now he’s going to be in the U.S., so that’s going to be very different.