We’ve focused a lot in recent weeks on what feels like the huge potential of arts & crafts, creative, culture, community, history & heritage, leisure, education, health and health & wellbeing as go-to options for places tackling #highstreet vacancy.
They feel especially valuable for those with a strong shopping centre that tends to draw any expanding #retail brands or a nearby out of town offer.
+ Town or city centre health service provision is demonstrating now in a number of locations what it can offer in terms of footfall and dwell time;
+ We know from friends who’ve been successful over many years, how much arts & crafts, creative brings to the table in terms of attractive stores, connections with locals makers and a great record in producing spin offs that take on empty units of their own;
+ A number of leisure, including gym, operators are proactive now in taking up space;
+ Extending community involvement is the focus of several high profile practitioners;
+ History & heritage are longer-established – through museums for instance – tho I believe they could do more in smaller units.
What we hear less of is the role education can play. We sometimes see specialists in units offering teaching for various age groups, and there are children’s nurseries in places. There are too, examples of centrally based campuses with others taking on former department stores to add to that.
But everywhere we work with #TheVacantShopsAcademy we ask in our ‘next steps’ whether the local schools or college or university could play a bigger part. How do we encourage the whole ‘live briefs’ conversation to help here…?
Could catering students run cafes, creative & photography groups open up galleries, engineering and design maybe use their skills to fix stuff or share with the less technically-minded. I’m sure specialists in this field can think of other workable examples.
I get that curriculum commitments, staff resources and the like will be a challenge. But…?
It’d be great to hear from #property and #placemaking colleagues who are seeing examples where they are or those in the sector itself who have one already or can see how they might take on a vacant unit…
