The Vacant Shops Academy

Is your place on the front foot to make the most of it to drive down your #highstreet vacancy levels and improve the mix of uses…?

It’s the time of year when typically interest in taking on space in our town and city centres picks up.

So…

Do you have a ‘place partnership’ in play to bring together stakeholders and consult businesses and residents about what they’d like to see take on units;

Are its members visiting any vacants you have to see what the barriers to getting them let are, and how each partner can play a role;

Do you have all the empties listed on a single platform and are you promoting them as an opportunity;

Have you sounded out arts & crafts, creative, culture, community, history & heritage, leisure, education, health and health & wellbeing organisations to see if they could take space alongside #retail, #hospitality and services;

Is there a place-wide pop up shop or ‘meanwhile… use’ project ready to make a start on opening up the trickier ones;

Do you have all the buildings and streetscene looking the best they can be…?

Or are you thinking tackling vacancy is “just an agents-landlords thing” and trusting to that.

Would love to hear from towns and city centres who’d like to take up the positive, proactive approach. We know it works.

That was the enthusiastically upbeat title of a presentation I delivered this week to Warwickshire Towns Network…

…an opportunity to set out for local #placemaking teams why we so strongly believe in the ‘place partnership’ approach whatever empty ‘shop’ numbers you have, and the elements we’re seeing that contribute to our optimism about the #highstreet.

Places are delivering significant reductions in their vacancy rates…

A lengthening list of brands are opening stores and venues, and publishing requirement lists for new locations;

We’re seeing more from our list of ‘alternative’ or maybe better described as ‘additional’ uses taking space;

More councils are investing in grant schemes to overcome barriers to letting and improving the ‘look’ of our town and city centres;

We’re learning how to re-purpose former department stores, large ex-brand units and banks;

Landlords and place leaders are seeing the benefits of pop up or ‘meanwhile… use’ beyond simple rates mitigation and as a way to test and build a track record for uses that will add to your mix and stay long term;

New events, activations, #streetart, ‘promote’ campaigns & more are being funded, delivered and extended, so adding to the vibrancy and vitality of our places.

As we always emphasise, it’s challenging still and there’s lots to do, but there are #HighStreetPositives, not least of which, on tackling vacancy, is…

We know how to do this…!

As a Ps. It’s worth saying that one reason for our cheerfulness is chatting to owners of new shops and venues in towns we’re working about why they’ve opened up and their positivity looking ahead. After all, without them….

An enjoyable and insightful visit to Grimsby including sitting in on the latest Town Centre Regeneration Event by the local 2025 Group.

Great to get an update on the various projects and initiatives that are giving the town a genuine sense of momentum…

A transformative, cinema-led leisure and new market scheme;

The #highstreet streetscene improvement project;

Redevelopment of the derelict St James House building as a new multi-functional business hub;

Bringing an NHS community diagnostic centre with potential for 146,000 additional tests per year to the heart of the town’s shopping offer;

The incoming Horizon Youth activity complex for young people.

For our part, supporting the ‘place partnership’ to work together on getting the remaining vacant units, especially on and around its ‘high street’ back in play – maybe short term during the development and then beyond that – is hugely helped by being part of a bigger story…

…and conversations about the role arts & crafts, creative, culture, community, history & heritage, leisure and education can play, alongside #retail, #hospitality and services, feel key.

It’s a town centre that’s changing quickly with, for businesses and organisations, brand and independent, an opportunity now to be a part of that, with a variety (but relatively small number) of available units, many in attractive, some of them heritage, buildings to take on…

Looking forward already to seeing how that’s playing out by the time of our next visit.

“Does our town centre really need more of those?”

It’s a comment you often hear when a new letting is announced because residents and existing businesses don’t think it adds to the #retail, #hospitality or services mix.

“I don’t go to town any more it’s just full of…” And then the list of whatever use types have wound the writer up.

That’s another commonly heard negative reaction to what ought to be a positive – one more empty unit being taken.

They explain why we argue that you don’t need to have a mid / high teens or over 20 per cent vacancy rate in your town or city centre to benefit from a ‘place partnership’.

In fact if that’s your place you’ve maybe got an even stronger reason. If the balance moves away from the kinds of uses that attract people in and help business owners to feel part of a positive something, then footfall and dwell time can drop away and your #highstreet goes quiet.

So why a ‘place partnership’…?

The answer is that having agents, landlords, businesses, community, cultural organisations, council(s), chamber, BID where there is one and others identified locally, working together means you can do more, better, quicker and more sustainably to strengthen your town centre.

• you can work out together what would add to the mix of uses and, as a team, try attract those to your location;
• you can, together, go visit vacant units, work out what the barriers to getting them back into use are and try tackle them with different stakeholders playing their part;
• you can ‘promote’ the place and the businesses and organisations you already have, present the empties as opportunities and highlight the newcomers as they arrive, together.

If not, a small number of empties can become bigger, and those you have turn tricky, long term – especially if they’re ex-department stores or big brand shops or previously banks.

If you start celebrating having almost no empties or none you might quickly find the overheated market sends rents rising and sees some of your favourite, long-established businesses closing. Instead you’d be better getting the ‘place partnership’ finding ways to make more space available for newcomers, growth and expansions.

Do any of those scenarios chime in your town or city centre…? Are you on the case…? It’d be great to hear from you…

It’s the first I’ve seen of a council looking to take up this option “to protect the high street”.

Are #placemaking and #property colleagues seeing similar in other parts of the country…?

This from the BBC explains the story:

“A Surrey council is proposing to stop allowing developers to turn retail properties into housing without full planning permission in a bid to protect the high street.

Reigate & Banstead Borough Council said it planned to remove permitted development rights to convert ground floor commercial units into residential properties.

The implementation of an Article 4 direction would mean developers have to apply for full planning permission in order to convert properties.”

The legislation when introduced always had this option, but I’d not heard of a local authority considering deploying it until now.

I feel very much the same about use class guidance for the #highstreet which I’d argue has thrown up unintended consequences and so is overdue for review with consideration of an option to give local councils some flexibility for the benefit of our town and city centres.

Both adjustments featured – along with a review of all the clauses in business rates reliefs regs which you could argue are preventing or at least slowing empty units being brought back into play – in our ‘manifesto’, which sets out policy and regulation changes we figured would help places trying to tackle vacancy and improve the mix of uses.

I’d be keen to hear what those of you working on this challenge are thinking…

We’re keen to hear about new examples of your town or city’s history and heritage playing a part in efforts to make them the best they can be today.

The two feature in our list of potential go-to options for places looking to tackle #highstreet vacancy by taking on empty units which starts with arts & crafts and ends at health & wellbeing…

…and we’re seeing reflections of our places past feature in other town and city centre regen and vitality projects and initiatives too.

Options might include…

• Opening a mini-museum to focus on part of your history. It doesn’t need be a full-scale museum, it could focus on just one era or story even;
• Creating a new archive centre;
• Hosting an exhibition or display of old photographs in an empty shop or maybe just in its windows. Images of your #retail and #hospitality businesses in days gone by are always popular;
• Using a town centre space for workshops or classes on an historical theme, maybe with an arts & crafts element;

And beyond the vacant units conversation it can help with…

• New sculpture or art installations featuring famous residents past or their stories;
• Murals, mosaics, street and shutter art;
• A new history or heritage-focused event.

What am I missing…?

It’d be great to hear how you are making use of place history and heritage today…?

“Expanding brands target 2025 openings”

Continuing our mini-series on headlines you’ll not see, we tracked back on the brand requirement lists of target locations we’ve shared with local tackling #highstreet vacancy teams around the country already this year.

These are just a sample of those we’ve seen posted here by commercial property agents and acquisition directors. There’ll be others and if you have sent one out, please add to the list.

Gail’s, Yours Clothing, Cornish Bakery, Insomnia Cookies, Cards Direct, Savers, Amber Taverns, Ground Bakery, Majestic, Brook Tavener.

These 10 are just part of a longer list of #retail and #hospitality businesses with expansion plans reported in the industry press. To that you can add independents who’ll take on units without making it into the nationals, and those from the arts & crafts, creative to health & wellbeing list which are increasingly part of the mix.

Following up these requirements lists to see if you can secure one of the new stores or venues is an important part of the role of the proactive ‘place partnership’ we believe every town and city centre should have, and so a crucial element of the #HighStreetPositives narrative.

Would love to see others if I’ve missed them…!