A BASINGSTOKE shopping centre is planning to give away 350 birthday cakes along with £20 gift vouchers to celebrate its 20-year anniversary.

As previously reported, Festival Place will mark the two-decade milestone on Saturday, October 22 with a special party including roaming acts, discounts and surprises.

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As part of the celebrations, 350 lucky customers will be given a celebratory birthday cake, including vegan and gluten-free options, while others could win a £20 gift voucher.

When it opened in 2002, Festival Place, at one million sq ft, was the largest development of its kind to open in the UK that year, with 165 shops, 18 cafes, bars and restaurants as well as a 10-screen cinema.

The £300m development, built and opened by Grosvenor Group, was designed to transform and update Basingstoke town centre.

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It has gone through various changes over the years, including being sold to American asset management firm TIAA-CREF in 2012.

In 2015, the centre was bought by AEW, a global real estate asset and investment management company and major refurbishment plans were announced a year later.

The three-phase scheme involved rejuvenating the centre by expanding and diversifying the offer alongside launching new branding.

St John’s Square was also modernised and the car park extended through a multi-million-pound refurbishment which included installing new signage, introducing coloured parking zones, creating wider spaces and installing a bay light monitoring system.

Neil Churchill, centre director of Festival Place, said: “Being a major retail shopping centre in the heart of the town is very special to us.

“As we mark this 20-year milestone, we have plenty to celebrate. We are constantly seeing an increase of people in the centre, with 44 per cent more visitors than last year, and we’re offering them more today than ever before. We’ve got over 180 great retailers, including many global brands, and they are trading fantastically well.

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“We’re also continually adding to the list of shops and restaurants on offer, which shows huge confidence in what we do here, and in Basingstoke in general.

“With our ongoing support for local charities, food and crisis initiatives, and our community health hub, we have never been more vital for the people of Basingstoke.

“When the centre opened, it was billed as a new dawn for the town and it has gone on to become the heart and soul of our community.

"Festival Place is about our retailers, our customers and our fantastic team. We have gone from strength to strength, and as we celebrate we look forward to seeing what the next 20 years will bring.”

Other developments at the shopping centre include the installation of 49 Propelair toilets in 2020, which only need 1.5 litres to flush compared to nine litres per flush for a conventional toilet.

It was one of the first shopping centres in the UK to install the low-flush toilets, to save water and money, reduce carbon emissions and improve hygiene for visitors – and it won an international Green Apple Environmental Award for its efforts.

Festival Place is also the only shopping centre in the UK to have received 16 consecutive Gold Health and Safety Awards every year for the last 16 years and has received the Order of Distinction from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) in recognition.

At the heart of its local community, Festival Place has launched many community-focused initiatives, and has won an International CSR Excellence Award in the Initiative category for its partnerships with Randox and the NHS.

When holidays were reintroduced after the pandemic lockdowns ended, the centre became a local collection and drop-off point for Randox Covid-19 PCR and Lateral Flow tests – the only shopping centre south of London to offer such a service.

It has also opened an NHS community health clinic, which is the first of its kind within a top-tier UK retail destination.

Festival Place is a proud supporter of the Deaf Awareness campaign, providing free training for nearly 80 retailers on how to better communicate with the deaf and hard-of-hearing-communities, and has offered free space to the Community Food Link, a Basingstoke charity that collects fresh food and delivers it to those in need.

Partnering with local charity All Yours, Festival Place also recently joined the ‘Package For’ initiative by making period packages available to collect for free from various locations within the shopping centre.

Other partnerships have seen Festival Place supporting the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower Lanyard scheme, which offers support to people with disabilities that aren't always obvious, and joining with AccessAble to create detailed access guides to 12 different areas of the centre, using facts, figures and photographs to help people with accessibility needs to plan their journey.

Earlier this year, Festival Place announced a three-year partnership with St Michael’s Hospice, which provides care to people affected by life-limiting illnesses across Basingstoke and North Hampshire.

This follows on from more than £37,500 already raised for the hospice by fundraising initiatives held at the shopping centre over the last four years, including the annual hospice Moonwalk and the Happy Wrappy present wrapping service each Christmas.

Festival Place currently has more than 180 retailers, including Five Guys, Brew Dog, Apple and Cosy Club, as well as a 10-screen Vue Cinema, the Escape Hunt entertainment experience, and Flip Out trampoline park.

For more information, visit https://www.festivalplace.co.uk/event/20-years-of-fp. 

*In a previous version of this article, Neil Churchill, centre director of Festival Place, stated that the shopping centre has more than 200 retailers. Festival Place asked to correct his statement to say it has more than 180 retailers.