“It’s time to get that large vacant former retail brand or department store unit on your highstreet sorted.”
Especially if you’ve more than one clustered together in part of your town or city centre.
It’s a theme of more than one of our tackling vacancy conversations this week and echoes a number we had before the summer break.
Now it’s time.
Thinking around the locations we’re supporting local teams on reducing the number of empty units they have and improving the mix of uses, these examples tend to have features in common…
- they’re large, often multi floor and can be local landmarks;
- they’ve been empty a while now – some still carrying the branding for bhs or Debenhams which gives you a clue on timing;
- they’re starting to look worse for wear;
- they may not now have an agent’s lettings board up or if they do it’s been there a while (and may not be in great shape itself);
- the unit is mentioned often in press reports and social media comment about how your place is faring;
- (on a bit of a technical point) you might find the previous occupier is still paying the rent or even owns the building;
- …and it could be that – even in England where it’s a potential go-to – the building falls outside the scope of High Street Rental Auction powers.
These examples are always for us on the list of priority units for the ‘place partnership’ teams we encourage locations to get on the case with and great illustrations of how that approach – bringing extra experience, expertise, connections, resources and possibly powers to the table – can start to move them forward when the commercial property market is stuck.
It’s also ideal for our “get the keys” project…
…and on the positive side, there are now plenty of case studies to draw on from around the country of how these spaces are being brought back into play.
So if you’ve one or more of these sitting empty, it’d be great to hear from you…
