How much of a role can our older, landmark, interesting buildings play in highstreet regen projects, and what as…
It’d be great to hear examples from your town or city centres of these buildings being brought back into use.
It can be tricky for a number of reasons…
- their original use may be very different from what’s needed and would work today, and repurposing, especially for older buildings, can be challenging;
- historic features we need or would like to retain might be harder to incorporate;
- they may – especially if empty for a long time – be in a poor way and so more costly to refurbish;
- listing and other heritage-related factors may play a part, maybe greatly reducing potential re-use options.
We’ve been thinking through this again while in the city of Dunfermline which has its own intriguing set of this kind of building – some already back in productive use, others still to find their way forward.
We did spend a bit of time in particular talking about former churches as we’ve seen a few of those for sale on recent Scotland trips.
As ever we’d love to know how you’re overcoming the barriers and whether there are really promising use types that could be candidates for more places.
Do let us know…
