An insightful and encouraging 3-day out & about in Tredegar for our tackling #highstreet vacancy project.
Meeting the owner of one newly opened business with three more readying to open in the town centre and hopefully another two in the near pipeline.
When a place has a mid / high teens vacancy rate and you’re focusing on a target group of units to start moving the dial, local people taking the initiative, investing in the town and launching their own businesses makes a huge, heartening difference.
With these underway, we’ve been able to focus time on this trip on the two key elements of our approach, ‘look’ initiatives on street scene, street art and similar to support the vacancy project, and talking to a range of individuals and organisations on the potential occupier list that starts with arts & crafts and finishes with health and wellbeing…
- Hearing from local health services teams about some of their projects on tackling loneliness and isolation and exploring how the town centre might support and add to those;
- Sharing a new list we’ve created of successful makers collective creative ventures around the country, and asking how that concept might work in Tredegar;
- Taking a look at vacant units with a number of community and education groups to see if they’d suit their plans for a more central space;
- Talking through the business support and grants available to fresh starts but importantly also for existing businesses, because strengthening those you have is crucial as you’re trying to attract new ones in;
- Meeting young students in the town’s brilliant film academy to find out how they see things and what they’d put there if we could give them keys to an empty shop.
Our approach to focus on community uses to add variety to the offer, make the economy more resilient and help build momentum which then encourages stronger demand from the #retail and #hospitality sectors, is one that looks to have potential here, in other locations we’re working and maybe in your place too if vacancy is in the mid / high teens or even over 20%.
It’d be great to hear your thoughts…
