What’s behind the shutters, boards, maybe vinyls of those vacant units in your town or city centre.
Take a look (if you haven’t already).
It’s something we’d really encourage ‘place partnership’ members on tackling #highstreet vacancy projects to do.
Get the keys and – as a team – go check inside any visibly vacant units your ‘audit, engage’ work suggests the commercial #property market might not let easily.
It gives you a brilliant insight into:
+ what use types could realistically operate from there;
+ whether there’s the option to split the ground floor into smaller units, or do something different on the uppers if it has them;
+ …and importantly, how much work is needed to get them back into play, and whether that’s likely to need funding beyond the contribution of the landlord and any would-be occupier.
These then tell you whether there’s a role for other place partners, maybe on the works needed, to help fund fitting out or just identifying potential tenants.
We’ve been lucky on recent #TheVacantShopsAcademy visits to go-see inside some of those long-time empties, it’s taught us a lot and hopefully helps move those units forward.
It’d be great to hear from you if this is something you’ve done in your place…
