clean, bright, airy, good selection of shops and facilities, easy parking
Disadvantages:
can be a little too quiet at times, not a vast range of shops
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
I spend a lot of time hanging around in shopping centres. Not through choice, but because of the perils of a) being married to man who works ridiculous hours and b) sharing a car with him. Bus shelters are not good places to wait for an unknown period (anything between 10 minutes and 2 hours) in comfort, and so I usually opt to meet afore-mentioned man in a shopping centre, where I can at least find something to occupy myself in a place that's warm, dry and reasonably convenient.
Edinburgh has several of these large, out-of-town shopping malls, and the city's main shopping street, Princes Street, looks less and less inviting and more and more run-down in comparison the more of them they build. One of the newer, brighter, and altogether better shopping malls is Ocean Terminal, which sits in the port of Leith, a massive regeneration area for Edinburgh which is not dissimilar to Londons docklands. Leith is now an up-and-coming area that attracts developers, so it's an attractive place for a shopping development. Ocean Terminal sits alongside the famous Royal Yacht Britannia, and so has frequent bus links from the city centre, making it attractive to tourists as well as locals. It's soooo trendy in fact that they were going to use it to host the MTV music awards backstage party. It also has a large (1600 spaces) multi-storey car park which is absolutely free to use, which is an attractive feature for shoppers.
The design of the building is meant to echo that of a ship, and I think it succeeds in giving you the impression of a large, luxury sort of ship, rather than a dilapidated oil rig like the Gyle Shopping Centre! There are three floors, comprising shops, bars, restaurants and a large 12-screen Ster Century cinema. There are great views from the restaurants out over the Firth of Forth and beyond, and there is so much glass in the construction of the rest of the building that views are not exactly hard to come by.
Ocean Terminal has been criticised for it's lack of shopping, and it was certainly a quiet place with little atmosphere when it first opened in 2001. It's taken time to fill all the retail units but it's now a far more lively shopping centre with a good selection of shops to choose from.
I find clothes shops are always more abundant than anything else in shopping centres, and here you will find French Connection, Dorothy Perkins, Burton, Wallis, La Senza, Logo, Gap and Fat Face, to name just a few. I prefer to wander in other kinds of shops like Boredom Free Zone, The Gadget Shop, Baxter's (where I can just drool and keep my wallet safely in my pocket), and Waterstones. There are some health and beauty outlets ranging from Boots and The Body Shop to the more unusual Chinese Herbal Medicine shop, and Aquaspace. There are also the usual selection of jewellers, mobile phone shops, stationary and greetings card outlets, and a Viva Sofa, which is great for a rest until the staff being to recognise you... Actually, there are some Viva Sofas for general use around the mall, so you don't even have to confine yourself to the shop to have a shot.
When hanging around, its inevitable that I will end up in a coffee shop at some point. Ocean Terminal has a Starbucks, O'Briens, M&S Cafe Revive (and Simply Food store), Costa Coffee, Cafe Expresso, and that's before we begin on the restaurants. Ma Potters is a popular choice, as is the award-winning Chinese herbal restaurant, Palace Chine. I've dined a couple of times in Zinc, which is a Jasper Conran eaterie, and is wonderful if a little pricey. Then of course there is the Ocean Bar and Kitchen, which has perhaps the best views to eat by. Not to mention Baxters Restaurant, one I've never tried. But since they put such nice food in tins, I imagine their fresh foods are to die for!
Ocean Terminal is my shopping centre of choice for hanging out for lots of reasons, but not least because it's so clean and shiny, and such a pleasant enviroment to sit or wander around in compared to some of Edinburgh's other efforts at out-of-town shopping (I'm not naming the disasters, except to say Gyle Gyle Gyle Gyle.....) Even the toilets are modern and clean and spacious, and I normally dread having to use any sort of public loos! There is a tremendous sense of light and space, and you can see up from the ground floor to the third because the ceiling is open in the middle. I don't feel in the least claustrophic, which is unusual for me as I can't even bear small department stores sometimes, let alone shopping malls.
Usefully, and perhaps because of the cinema trade, many of the shops are open well into the evening. And even when the shops are shut, the comfy sofas are still there, and there are ever-changing art exhibitions displayed on the walls, which means there is always something new to look at. There are other weird and wonderful things like the aqua-massager, and massage chairs which are coin-operated and can therefore be used at any time.
The only downside to Ocean Terminal is that it has taken so long to really get off the ground and to get enough shops interested in moving in, and I think many people who saw it in the early stages might not remember it fondly, and rather visualise it as empty and characterless. It's got the balance right for me at the moment: although the centre might prefer it to be busier, it's never crowded or uncomfortable, even at the weekends, which suits me down to the ground. But it has got enough shoppers to give it an injection of life.
I'm the one in the massage chair at 10pm, dozing off, clutching an empty coffee cup...
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