But I think I’m okay to go walk-see Banbury town centre.
It’s a place that I’ve always thought has a huge amount going for it: heritage buildings, a sizeable independents group, lots of pedestrianised space, proactive shopping centre team, the award-winning Lock29 destination, canal with a developing leisure offer on both sides, a sprinkling of uses from our ‘alternative’ / additional list taking up units, and more.
Personally it’s also been a significant part of my own journey and taught me a lot, including town team time and a short BID interim.
It has all the players you need for a tackling vacancy-focused ‘place partnership’ too – agents, landlords, businesses, community, cultural organisations, councils, chamber, BID – but I’m wondering if they are all working closely together on this issue.
As I’ll often say, it’s really hard to tell from just a walk see, without taking time to investigate the back story of each empty unit, exactly what the picture is.
Visibly the headline vacancy rate looks to be in the mid / low teens percent, but it has some landmark buildings and long-time empties it’d be great to see back in play and lots positive to offer as a place to would-be new occupiers that makes me think getting the numbers down is do-able with a concerted, collaborative effort.
Does that describe your town or city centre too…? Do you have more empty units than you’d like…? Are residents and existing businesses unhappy with the changing mix of uses…?
It’d be good to hear from you…
