Fitch completes specialist team

Fitch has appointed a retail entertainment expert to complete a specialist team for an assault on the mixed retail and leisure sector. The consultancy maintains the sector is currently under-exploited in the UK and Europe when compared to the US.

Tim Baker joined the London office last week as an associate director. An architect specialising in the merging of retail and leisure facilities, he previously worked at RTKL on projects including the redevelopment of London’s Trocadero centre.

Baker will join a ten-strong specialist team at Fitch, which has already created Chicago’s Nickelodeon store, the Universal City Florida attraction in Orlando and UCI cinemas in Huddersfield and Cardiff. The team is now working on a confidential set of mould-breaking retail/leisure projects in Spain, Sweden and Germany, says Fitch director Zuilmah Wallis.

Senior consultant David Fraser describes the team as an expanding one. It will work on a global basis.

Mixed retail and leisure attractions are maturing at an increasing rate. After long being predicted as a growth industry, “They are genuinely happening in their own right,” says Wallis.

In common with many other design groups, Fitch is finding it difficult to locate designers with sufficient experience of retail graphics. It currently has six vacancies for such staff.

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