We’re always happy to help and are creating a new series of guides and briefing notes around key elements of the challenges place leaders and managers are facing.

Are you planning to:

Start work on tackling high street vacancy in your town or city centre, and improve the mix of use types you have now?
Be one of the places that’s really benefited from having health & wellbeing services on the high street?
Make more of the option to encourage arts & crafts, creative, culture, community businesses, groups and organisations to take on vacant units?
Ensure that empty units look the best they can while work continues to get them let?
Improve the ‘look’ of your location as a whole because of all that it can do to help attract residents, visitors, new occupiers and investors, and extend dwell time?

If so, please ask for a copy of one of our guides or briefings.

Tackling High Street Vacancy – a guide

If empty units are an issue in your town or city centre, setting up a proactive tackling vacancy-focused ‘place partnership’ is a first step.

This guide explains the ‘why’ and ‘how’.

Get the Keys – taking a public-private sector team into empty ‘high street’ units

One task it can take on is to bring together a public-private sector team, “get the keys” and go look inside empty units, especially larger, often multi-floor, ones that have been vacant for some time.

This briefing explains how, with special focus on an award-winning case study in Aberdeen.

Health & Wellbeing Services onto the High Street

Exploring the potential that bringing health and health & wellbeing services onto the high street can have, with examples, case studies and reporting from around the UK as an illustration of the part this option can play in tackling vacancy.

Tackling High Street Vacancy with Arts & Crafts, Creative, Culture and Community Uses

In this briefing, we’ve put together a listing of some of those we’ve worked with or seen.

“Where possible, we’d encourage the place to be looking to support agents and landlords to get a unit let, either long-term or initially on a short-term, pop-up, ‘meanwhile… use’ basis.”

A Guide to Vinyling

‘Vinyling’ comes next, i.e. where getting the unit back in play isn’t going to be possible for now.

This guide brings together some useful examples.

Community ‘Clean-Ups’ to Support Tackling High Street Vacancy Efforts

Thir briefing provides a number of community and business ‘clean-up’ initiatives, and emphasising why we see them as a valuable element of tackling high street vacancy ‘place partnership’ work.

As we learn more, new initiatives emerge or there are additional challenges to face, we will continue to build the series. Please do shout if there’s one you think we could address now!

‘Meanwhile… use’

For #highstreet and #placemaking colleagues looking to make ‘meanwhile… use’ and/or #popupshop initiatives a part of their empty shops project, here’s a sketch of the key elements from schemes we have run in several town and city centres since 2013.

We break them down into 4 parts:

Pre-work to understand the target location;
Pre-work on documentation and financials;
Elements of the project once underway;
Risks and potential mitigations.

1. Location pre-work

Audit vacant units in the chosen location;
Connect with agents (or landlord where a unit is not marketed) to understand the backstory of each vacant and extract from the list those which are let, development / refurb sites or under offer;
Assess which business and organisation types the area is short of and those it ought to avoid getting more of if possible;
Draft project rationale, objectives and success measures.

“A former shop that has been converted into an arts space has been ‘really positive’ for a town centre, a local councillor says.”
BBC News

2. Project Pre-Work

Identify target units (always more than one);
Agree funding for, approach to and potential suppliers for any necessary capital works;
Set up an entity to lease units from the landlord if required;
Draw up a 2-way lease: landlord / entity, entity / occupier(s);
Decide strategy on rent, rates, BID levy, utilities, stay duration;
Settle approach to choosing which occupier(s) get unit(s);
Give the first unit a name, either a project title (e.g. Flashop – which we used in Wantage) or, if one occupier is taking a long run, something they choose.

3. Operational

Reach agreement to let unit(s);
Advertise for occupiers;
Draft a calendar of occupiers;
Introduce your occupiers to each other and encourage a sharing, joint promotion, team ethic;
Build and run traditional and social media support;
Develop and run business support for occupiers;
Create next step unit options for successful pop ups.

4. Risks and Mitigations

Target units let;
Excess applicants;
Applicants of the ‘wrong’ type;
Shortage of applicants;
Existing businesses object;
Council members object to investing in property ‘to benefit a private landlord’;
Council or BID where there is one lacks capacity or has challenges to playing its part;
Periods of vacancy in the popup(s);
Occupier(s) don’t work out and so don’t progress;
First or early occupier does work and wants to stay;
Competing pop up projects appear.