We know how positive an effect a new health services ‘community diagnostic centre’ (CDC), college or university campus and an arts & crafts makers collective store can have on town and city centres…
…so how do we go about getting more…?
It’d be great to hear from place leaders and managers that have one or more of those in their location, and what the pluses are.
These are just some of what we call the ‘alternative’ or additional use types we’re suggesting that the local teams working on tackling highstreet vacancy explore as potential go-to options to take on empty units.
The full list is: arts & crafts, creative, culture, community, history & heritage, leisure, education, health and health & wellbeing. It’s been suggested a few times that we add ‘sustainability’ to create an easy category to include various types of business and organisation with this as their focus.
Encouragingly we’re seeing more and more examples, including some taking on bigger units like former department stores.
Grimsby is one we’ve seen to have a town centre CDC open, with Southend doing similar. Gloucester has its new University Campus in the former city centre Debenhams. And there are so many different examples of arts & crafts makers collectives we’ve written one of our guides & briefing notes series to draw them together.
Two things to add…
One is we’d argue, based on experience from the 46 locations we’re working with, that this option backs up the case for having a ‘place partnership’ on the case because identifying and then securing these use types can be more challenging than getting in retail, hospitality & services occupiers.
The other is a question. Can these uses – either with a large single occupier or a cluster on one theme – take on the town centre anchor status that only large retailers used to have…?
It’d be interesting as ever to hear your thoughts…
