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Will Fulford picks his way between displays of jewellery made from electrical components and bundles of brightly coloured pashminas. “Afternoon, Will” says a stallholder selling his own-designed shirts. “Afternoon, Curtis,” replies Fulford. It is one of the many nods and greetings exchanged on a tour of one of London’s most famous markets.

Fulford, 33, is the son of Bill Fulford, who along with partner Peter Wheeler established Camden Lock Market in 1973 and continues to run and own it today. The market is one of three next to the Regent’s Canal in Camden, NW1, one of which remains closed after a devastating fire last year.

Camden Lock Market now attracts 10m visitors a year, who browse through the myriad stalls and shops. The diversity of the tenants is what makes the market feel like a community, rather than just another retail development, says Fulford.

This sense of the market as a community has been offered as a partial explanation as to why, when the UK is in the middle of recession with retail giants going to the wall, Camden Lock Market has seen a 15% rise in its numbers of traders in January and February.

Fulford adds: “As the recession continues to bite, more people who have been made redundant are setting up stalls.”

Fulford believes a key element for traders is the market’s low entry cost. At Camden Lock Market, 6ft by 3ft stalls can be rented for £15 on week days, and £40 at weekends. There is also an easy exit without the hassle of being tangled up in long leases.

“Markets are the breeding ground for new businesses, and new businesses generate employment,” he says. “Without new businesses you don’t have sustainable employment growth.”

He points out that research by independent think tank the New Economics Foundation shows that markets have twice the employment density of supermarkets and a significantly higher so-called “multiplier effect”, meaning that money paid for goods within the market stays within the local economy as it is used by the stallholders to buy something else locally – and so on.

On the back of this, Fulford has big plans to roll out Camden Lock Market’s concept across the UK over the next 10 years.

To do this, Fulford, who has a background in urban regeneration, has set up a 50:50 joint venture between his own independent retail advisory company, Spaceworks, founded in 2007, and London-based property developer Milligan, known for revamping Liverpool’s Metquarter shopping centre and Manchester’s Triangle shoppping centre. Fulford’s dad Bill has agreed to act as an adviser to the new jv, which has been christened the Urban Market Company. The team also includes Milligan’s founder John Milligan and development director Mark Morgan.

UMC plans to buy up to 10 mixed-used sites in UK conurbations, with the sites ranging in size from one to 3 acres. It intends to redevlop these as mixed-use schemes with markets as their hubs, surrounded by workshops, food and drink stalls, and flats.

The jv says it is looking at a range of sites, including the many stalled retail schemes across the country that have been floored by the recession. “We can activate mothballed sites and create temporary revenue streams – even in a recession,” says Fulford Jnr. “This would also increase planning gain, and add value to the surrounding development.”

Fulford Snr agrees: “I don’t want to be accused of ‘green-shootism’, as it were, but a recession is a good time for this type of business. Developing markets is always a good idea.”

He adds that although he had thought about rolling out the Camden Lock concept during previous recessions, the time is now right to press ahead with the plan in this recession because the Fulfords have “found the right chemistry” with Milligan.

Despite Camden Lock Market’s success being a key factor in encouraging the rollout of the concept, UMC is at pains to point out that these developments are not going to be replicas of Camden.

“It’s a matter of getting the right elements in a particular environment and – because we are dealing with independents – you just can’t recreate Camden Lock, “ says Fulford Snr. “Each development will be full of different people. We won’t be trading under the Camden Lock name, but I will be bringing my track record, knowledge and expertise to the table.”

But the all-important question is where, in the middle of a recession, is the finance going to come from for schemes with, potentially, a total collective area of 1.2m sq ft when so little debt financing is available? The answer is that Milligan’s equity partners have offered to stump up the necessary cash.

“Our equity backers believe in the model, and they have put the finance in place to back a scheme as and when it comes to fruition,” says Morgan.

“We have been in a couple of situations where we have taken potential developments a long way down the line and we have had the finance to take them forward.”

Although both sides are reluctant to put a figure on how much Milligan’s equity partners will invest, Fulford says they have agreed to cough up the cash for “the first two or three schemes.”
Later projects, he says, will be funded from the money generated by these. “Although the schemes will be quity equity intensive, the underlying concept is highly attractive to Milligan – and its network of equity partners,” he adds.

Given that the market schemes are intended to spur regeneration wherever they are sited, the jv hopes to persaude local councils to partner it on some of the projects, and that they will provide both land and finance. “Councils understand what we want to do in terms of regeneration and the socio-economic aspects of the market concept,” says Morgan. “Councils also have access to local government funding and will bring that to the party.”

Morgan says UMC is well aware that the type of income streams that markets tend to produce are not particularly appealing to institutional investors, which usually want to see long-term leases let to tenants with strong covenants. But, he says, with the recession forcing a rethink on retailers’ rents, the way markets operate may become more attractive to such investors.

“I’d rather have a Camden Lock-type development with 100 tenants whom I know would be able to pay their £18 rents, than lease to the high street shops or offices that you see out there at the moment,” he says.

UMC says it is targeting historic UK cities and towns in which to roll out its schemes. “We’ve been looking at Leeds, Glasgow, Bristol and Bath,” says Morgan. “We’re looking for locations with high tourist footfalls. This is very important and why this type of scheme sits very well with historic cities.”

Fulford Snr says various London boroughs are also on the list – especially Deptford. “You can see the potential of Deptford. It has Bermondsey on the one side and Greenwich on the other and is a good example of an area that has a pretty good buzz.

“Deptford has a very urban feel and has a huge history. It is the kind of environment where this model could fit, given the right property opportunity.”

Precisely where the first site will be should be revealed by summer: “I’d like to think we will be securing our first site in the next three months,” says Morgan. “Then we have got to go through the process of getting planning permission, and then it will be another six months to get the first market stalls set up. And the timescale for the other buildings depends purely on the type of site it is.”

Nor does UMC rule out taking over existing markets. As Morgans adds: “It’s not inconceivable that we’d get involved in an existing market that we could reposition or replace, or that we’d take over a historic market building – so there are any number of ways that development could be done.”

Although the Urban Marketing Company has not yet bought any sites to redevelop as markets, it has created concept drawings to show how its schemes would be set out.

Created by Milligan’s “artist in residence”, former Turner Prize nominee Mel Chantrey, the drawings map out how space could be used in the 20 sites that UMC wants to develop across the country.

Although the designs vary, depending on the surrounding buildings, each scheme is based on a central market. “The market sits at the core and it’s all about being an incubator for businesses,” says Milligan director Paul Hanegraaf. He says that UMC sees the markets as nuclei for “creative communities”.

Once the market is up and running, UMC will build 4-6 shops around it. If they prove successful, workshops and food and drinks stalls will be added.

The company says that this approach will allow successful businesses to grow quickly, because it will let them move into shop and workshop premises as soon as they are large enough. Hanegraaf adds: “We want to incubate businesses so that they may be able to eventually move to the high street.”

Eventually, the UMC says its market sites could be surrounded by 4-5 storey schemes, which could feature car parks at their tops, and include large units for leisure uses, such as cinemas. However, UMC says the markets will remain the central focus of these larger sites. They are also keen to include space for a local arts and crafts organisation if the site is suitable.

The idea for Camden Lock was born in the late 1960s. Bill Fulford and Peter Wheeler – who Fulford credits as having a “true sense of direction about the retail industry” – had been doing residential conversions. But, says Fulford: “We spotted this derelict site, and we picked up the tail-end of a lease from British Waterways which had the freehold – it liked the way we could develop the site.”

The 55,000 sq ft market is on the other side of Camden High Street from the Canal Market area (in which Chelsfield Partners owns a 25% stake), which was destroyed by fire last February.

Camden Lock comprises the West, Middle and East Yards and Market Hall. Retail space on offer in this area includes: stalls of 3ft by 6ft, smaller shop units that are let on a market stall basis, and bigger shops of 200-500 sq ft.

Fulford is reluctant to disclose the actual rent figures for the units, but says: “You get Zone A rental levels on the hight street and then it drops off a bit, depending on the unit. Rents are very competitive and that’s part of the attraction of the mix. But there is a very low cost entry for traders.”

The churn of retailers among the 60 large shops is as low as three a year, and potential tenants face a vetting process, while the market is kept fluid with 80% of regular traders and 20% for casual traders. Fulford says: “If we have a unit available we put out the message. We trawl to see who is around. We try to build diversity and try to keep the machine unique.”