By the 1960s the value of store as a going business often became incidental to its asset value as a property; the department store itself became a commodity. Rising property values made it tempting for retailers to cash in or redevelop sites, particularly in times of tough trading conditions. In a climate of increasingly rapacious acquisition of both business and property, the distinction between store owners and property speculators could became so fine as to be virtually invisible, as in the case of entrepreneurs like charlrs Clore and Hugh Fraser whose activities frequently made headline news in the pass. With retail operating in a world in which the property market was becoming increasingly dominant, Christopher Bourne commented later, ‘The value of the site could be divorced from the business and the latter transferred to a cheaper rental. Much of the expansion. In London modernization and rebuilding of the 1960s and ‘70s was financed by sale and leaseback arrangements which consisted of selling freeholds to financial institutions and then leasing them back in other to free up capital.
Mid-market, traditional department store seemed particularly vulnerable to this strategy. The Army Stores in Victoria, was founded in 1871 as a co-operative for military officers, but from 1928 operated as a commercial department store, one of Bourne and Hollingsworth’s competitors for the middle-class market. The property was acquired for large scale redevelopment by the Scottish retailer and property speculator, Hugh Fraser in 1973, when the three existing freeholders, Army and Navy Stores, Church Commissioners and Crown Estate, were involved in a 44.5m sale and leaseback scheme. The redevelopment included a 137,000 square feet department store pre-let to the Army and Navy Stores. But also a much larger office development along Victoria Street. Fraser notorious for his successful invasion of retailing south of the Border, also and leased back the freeholds of Brakers in Kensington D.H. Evans Street, and many of the other stores he hand acquired. Another store group, Debenhams, had accumulated some 65 million worth of property by 1972. It sold and leased back the freehold of the former Marshall and Snelgrove store on Oxford Street, and sold the innovative Woollands Store in Knightsbridge outright for redevelopment as a hotel even though it was trading successfully. The hotel was bought by Maxwell Joseph’s Grand Metropolitan Hotels Group for Capital and Counties Property Group who owned the site. The architect involved was Richard Seifert who subsequently became a pivotal in the games around Bourne and Hollingsworth.