The Vacant Shops Academy

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…

Tackling #highstreet vacancy. It’s not just about the numbers.

Several of our recent #TheVacantShopsAcademy commissions are in places that have – by comparison – relatively small empty unit counts.

But they do warrant the tackling vacancy-focused ‘place partnership’ approach as much as those town or city centres where the headline rate is in the mid / high teens or over 20%.

Why…?

The challenge those places are reporting are twofold:

They have some, often large and prominent, sometimes long-empty and deteriorating units that are proving tricky to get back into use, maybe ones that had been department stores, large brands or banks;

+ Residents and existing businesses are getting concerned about the mix of uses the centre has – too much of the same thing, not enough “actual shops”, new lettings that don’t really add to its attractiveness as a reason to visit. This is an issue our #placemaking friend Chris Wade FIPM at The People & Places Partnership Ltd. keeps highlighting in his insightful studies of local perceptions.

If this is your town or city centre it’s just as important that the place works alongside agents and landlords to try ensure those few remaining units go to uses that help. That’s about being proactive, consulting on what residents and businesses would value, and working to recruit those that add rather than be passive, wait to see what emerges and grumble about the result.

Similarly with the large units. Eventually something will likely happen, but will it be the outcome the place would choose…? Better – tho not always easy – to try impact those decisions.

We’re very happy to talk with places that have either or both challenges about your options, and share how town and city centres that take on this approach are doing it…

Bit small for a shop, maybe. Maybe.

What is your town or city centre doing with its decommissioned red phone boxes…?

The question came up this week as part of a wider conversation about the (much bigger…?) role arts & crafts, creative, culture, history & heritage can play in our #highstreet places.

For #TheVacantShopsAcademy locations we’ll regularly ask tackling vacancy-focused ‘place partnerships’ to think of this list as potential options for taking on vacant units, especially where business and resident consultation suggests improving the mix of uses is important.

This response our #placemaking friend

Chris Wade FIPM at The People & Places Partnership Ltd. tells us is a regular feature of his work on customer (and importantly non-customer) perceptions.

We also argue that creativity has a big part to play beyond vacancy as a contribution to the attractiveness of your place, to extending dwell-time, creating trails of maybe art or heritage features, and crucially where it prompts visitors to take and share images across social media to ‘encourage’ others. 

Our visit this week to Brackley and Towcester featured several examples. It might be commissioned or guerrilla, modern or historic, connected or (seemingly) random. And those red phone boxes are for sure an opportunity.

The team there would love to hear examples of these #heritage treasures being re-used from your places. Do share…

A really enjoyable day visiting Brackley & Towcester – two really strong indie towns with #highstreet #retail businesses it’s well worth stopping by to see if you’re in that part of the world (of which more in future posts).

As ever we are especially interested in the opportunities to join them with some nice units to go for, but you’ll likely need move quickly as there’s just a handful vacant in each with, it looks like, interest in a number already.

Meanwhile we spent quite some time moving less than quickly after checking in on the awesome Antique Cellar (where the first image in our set was from). That’s worth a trip here on its own.

Struggling. Ailing. One in the headline. The other in the intro. Both words used to describe the #highstreet by a national media report this week.

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, I was writing notes on 4 #TheVacantShopsAcademy locations:

+ Place 1 has all but halved a 25% vacancy rate in 18 months;

+ Another has seen a headline figure of 30 visibly vacant units at our ‘audit’ in April down to just 7 ‘empty and available’ by September;

+ A third location has no suitable unit for an expanding #retail brand that is keen to be there. It’s worth adding here that it’s far from rare we find brands with requirement lists for places they’d like to be but have no space for them;

And finally, a place that had seen vacancy numbers rising, up to 25 empty units (18% of its total) nine weeks ago, now has 5 of those listed as ‘under offer’ and 2 let.

Also… on the same day as the media story mentioned at the start, Gail’s reported opening its 150th site, the MD of Cornish Bakery announced their 63rd, the Executive Chairman at Loungers said: “Delighted to say we’ve opened our 237th Lounge (& 276th site overall),” and the UK CEO of Søstrene Grene lists 6 maybe 7 new locations as their “expansion accelerates for the final quarter of 2024”. All this in the week WHSmith celebrated “our 50th Toys”R”Us shop-in-shop is now open!” And as Laura Harris can tell you from her brilliant #HighStreetPositives campaign, there’s much more like that.

So what’s occurring….? Well the easy bit is that we’ve still work to do to promote the positives and switch that media narrative.

But how to explain the numbers in our briefings…? Here’s a theory.

There are 4 sorts of place.

+ One that had high empty unit rates but got a tackling vacancy-focused ‘place partnership’ on the case;

+ Another that attracts brands and indie occupiers and is going well, with proactive and supported agents & landlords making the most of that;

+ A third is smaller places with only a few vacant units that need work hard to ensure use types they draw in for those that remain add to the mix;

+ And then there are the town and city centres that, for a variety of reasons, aren’t (yet) prioritising vacancy at all.

Am I missing a type…? Which one is your place…?

I’d love to hear your views…

The national ‘shop’ vacancy rate is said to be 14%. And has been stuck around that number for some time.

Can we get it into single figures…?

Single figures. Does that seem wildly optimistic…?

I ask the question as #placemaking colleagues are starting to post on what the new government’s approach on #highstreet might look like when it emerges in the form of policy and regulation changes.

So it seemed worth having one last try at suggesting this…

“Ask (and resource) every local authority to report on vacancy numbers twice a year, and work with agents, landlords, businesses, community, cultural organisations, chamber and BID where there is one to overcome barriers to let…”

In other words encourage every place where empty units is an issue to set up a tackling vacancy-focused ‘place partnership’.

A number of places we’re working with through #TheVacantShopsAcademy are developing the approach and starting to see the impact it can have.

We’re just back from Aberdeen. A place we think of as a beacon for this working together approach to tackling vacancy. Different organisations there, using slightly varying methodologies, are tracking vacancy rates. And the impact on what was a 25% headline rate on Union Street is significant. Closing on halved on one count. Halved…!

Everyone you talk to there will emphasise that it’s still challenging and they’ve much to do yet, a work in progress but…

…if that’s possible in two years, and a number of other locations we’re working with are seeing reductions too, why can we not aim for a single figures national average.

The answer currently, to be blunt, is that not all towns and city centres are on the same page. Some are still with “it’s just an agents-landlords thing”, leaving vacancy to them and missing the crucial role fellow stakeholders bring. Others are trying the master planning route first, or relying on multi-million pound ‘big ticket item’ spending on local buildings or projects to fix the whole place (will it…?).

Thing is. We know how to do this. Places are proving it. I believe we can get that 14% down. But only if…

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…

So we’ve written a ‘how to’ guide to tackling #highstreet vacancy…

…or at least an introduction to our ‘audit, engage, encourage, promote’ approach as we’ve run it or are underway in 33 #TheVacantShopsAcademy locations.

Hopefully it’ll be helpful to town or city centres with empty unit rates in the mid / high teens or even 20+ per cent.

It’s also aimed at places looking to improve their current mix of use types or to find a way to get a small number of tricky long-time vacants back into play.

If any of those is your place, please take a look and let us know what you think.

We also cover the ‘why’ – the opportunity that empty units present, the chance it could mean for a range of different use types to make your offer more varied and your economy more resilient, and the reality that where vacancy is up to those kinds of numbers it’s very likely to get worse if you’re not on the case.

The team at High Streets Task Force have kindly slotted it into their Library of #placemaking resources so it’s easily accessible.

We’re always keen to talk to council and #BID teams who are working on this key metric or would like to, so do get in touch…

I know a number of #highstreet placemaking colleagues are working with an arcade as part of their town or city centre project…

…maybe influenced by its attractiveness as a destination, its #heritage status, the size of its units making it an ideal home for indie #retail and #hospitality, the roof which allows it to be a space for events, activity, performance, outside seating & more.

So it was really insightful on this week’s out & about in Blaenau Gwent to see the transformation being worked by the council team on The Arcade, Abertillery.

A major paint refresh done, smart & informative vinyling reflecting its history and the chance to rent, new collective shop signage to come, and plans to bring one or two of its empty units back into play by offering pop up shop opportunities, as part of our wider #TheVacantShopsAcademy tackling vacancy approach in the town centre.

It looks great and feels sure to have an impact on building momentum in the neighbouring streets.

It’d be interesting to hear from other places where an arcade initiative is at the heart of things.

Over to you…