The Vacant Shops Academy

Do love to see #streetart, wall art, sculptures, shutter art and – what do we call this new format – utility box art…? on out & about trips to town and city centres.

🛍️ A memorable part of an insightful visit to High Wycombe just to see what’s changed there with incoming #retail and #hospitality businesses since last time, and catch up with friends.

And here’s more on the artist for the post image: http://www.shaunaanseo.com

🎭 It’s also an interesting conversation across #TheVacantShopsAcademy locations we’re working around how much difference these #placemaking touches – along with flowers, music, performance and the like – can have on your work to reduce the number of empty units and improve the mix of uses.

Lots I’d say.

🤔 What do you think…?

Good for positive impressions created, the boost it can give you on social media, involvement of #community in making these things happen and keeping them looking good, a reflection of your history or heritage maybe, and if you’ve plenty, the chance to go for some kind of trail to draw people around the place.

🤳🏽 Feel free to share your favourite examples…!

Just couldn’t resist this.

🗞️ It may be a one off, or there’ll be a delay before others follow. Or it’s the start of something.

What is…?

🛍️ A national newspaper story with a headline which includes the words: “high street revival”, has a sub header: “Retailers are putting their faith in bricks & mortar as it becomes clear customers want in-store shopping” and, most telling of all, follows with the phrase:

“…the death of the high street may have been greatly exaggerated.”

🗝️ The article in The Times goes on to list #retail “chains in expansion mode” and “moving into larger units”.

The piece may of course be the one swallow that ain’t making a summer. But if it’s more than that, it’s crucial.

📈 As we’ve been saying for many years, and as the brilliant Laura Harris #HighStreetPositives series on here is demonstrating, upbeat sentiment makes a difference to investment decisions, to business owners opting to take on new units, to more customers choosing the #highstreet over alternatives. And the momentum builds.

From our perspective at #TheVacantShopsAcademy none of this is a surprise. We’re lucky enough to be working with 30+ places and have seen for some time increasing interest, longer #property requirements lists, more new lettings.

⚖️ It’s challenging still. We continue to have a range of #placemaking policy and regulation things that could be reviewed and adjusted which are holding us back, and most of all there are towns and cities without the tackling vacancy-focused ‘place partnership’ that’s needed to work together on reducing their vacancy rate and improving the mix of uses.

💡We’re trying to encourage and inspire more places to take this on.

And if the national media narrative is (finally) shifting that’s 💯 going to help…!

How many towns promote neighbouring villages as part of their marketing and comms. Are your #highstreet businesses doing the same in their own social media…?

I ask following an enjoyable and insightful day with #TheVacantShopsAcademy in Brentwood, Ingatestone and Shenfield where the #BID Brentwood Connected covers all three places, and joint / cross-promotion is part of a really interesting conversation.

🤔 We first suggested this might be a positive ‘next step’ during a ‘health check’ project with a range of locations in South Gloucestershire. It’d be great to hear whether #placemaking friends in other towns have experience of trying it.

🏛️ It might be that your history or heritage buildings and features are something you could encourage visitors to make the short journey between locations for;

🛍️ The town’s brand #retail and #hospitality offer may be an attraction to village residents and their #indie businesses could make it worth a trip out of town;

🎭 Or it could be installations, #streetart, leisure, learning, events, markets & more that you think to focus on to make the whole greater than what each place has on its own.

Do let us know…

“I am doing MY best”.

“I can have my limitations.”

🏥 We often talk on here about the potential for #health and health & wellbeing services as one of the really promising ‘alternative’ or rather ‘additional use’ options for vacant units in our town and city centres.

It’s part of a list that also features arts & crafts, creative, culture, community, leisure, education as potential go-to occupiers now alongside the more regular #retail, #hospitality and services.

Interesting then to see examples on recent out & about trips with #TheVacantShopsAcademy of one of our NHS health trusts opening a series of #highstreet units as a ‘Mental Health & Wellbeing Hub’.

Even more striking in Banbury is that as well as taking on a unit they’ve worked with the owners / asset managers / local team to post messages on a number of the centre walls.

📸 You can see examples in the image set along with two Oxfordshire ‘shopfronts’.

Early days to know if this particular service will be well supported, but here’s hoping.

📈 Initial feedback from community diagnostic and other health service types taking shopping centre spaces to increase their accessibility, is that the footfall impact can be very positive for its neighbour businesses and organisations.

It’d be good to hear from #property and #placemaking colleagues with experience in this field on whether they see this as a developing strength other places should draw on…?

Never go back, they say…

But I guess it’s okay to walk-see a town centre and catch up with #property and #placemaking friends.

So return to Banbury, a place we got to know really well as part of its #townteam, a town centre with lots to like…

🏛️ An attractive collection of heritage buildings;

• No shortage of history to recall with a museum in the heart of the town telling those stories;

🛍️ A strong group of #indie #retail, #hospitality and services business with some recent additions very much in line with the arts & crafts, creative, culture, community, leisure, education, health & wellbeing themes of current thinking;

• The award-winning Lock 29 innovating in a former department store space;

⚓️ Canal with an historic and still active boatyard;

• New waterside development with cinema, hotel and eateries;

☀️ A stunning hanging basket display and some neat touches created by its BID;

…and much more.

What it doesn’t seem to have – and friends locally will correct me if I’m wrong – is a tackling vacancy-focused ‘place partnership’ to bring agents, landlords, businesses, community, councils, cultural organisations, chamber & BID together to work on that issue, rather than in isolation.

They are of course not alone among town and city centres with this as a challenge.

📉 Is a way forward to set yourselves a target of halving #highstreet vacancy in 18 months and see how you go…?

Impossible…? Setting yourself up to fail…? Or very much worth trying to see where it gets you in reducing the number of empty units and improving the mix of uses.

🎯 For sure you wouldn’t be the first place to hit that target…!

So how does a town centre drop its number of empty #highstreet units from 23 to 3 in 18 months…?

Returning to the theme of a recent out & about and the story of Wantage, Oxfordshire – the town that was host to our first tackling vacancy project from 2013.

📉 11 years ago now, but still much that town and city centres with too many vacant units can draw on…

Crucially – and we only really learned this looking back from the perspective of places that didn’t have the same – agents, landlords, businesses, community, councils and chamber working together in a ‘place partnership’ or #townteam as we called it. And it’s worth emphasising here that’s not the same as a committee. I don’t believe we ever had all the players in Wantage one room, but they were (largely) on the same page.

Other factors:
🪜 a town centre-wide #popupshop project;

• a local charitable group that took on a long-derelict unit and turned it into a #community hub which is still there today;
  🛍️ an arcade of 3 large units which split them and used spare space to create a 12-small-unit community of independent businesses, a number of which went on to take bigger / more prominent town centre spaces – in other words the town’s own #indie incubator;
  🎸 plus an ongoing campaign to improve the look of buildings, planting, a weekly ‘presents’ volunteer-for-charity music performance in the market place, arts & crafts window displays, promotion via traditional and social media & more.

What did I forget…?

🥇As well as the impact on vacancy and adding to the mix of uses (a bookshop, sports shop, toy shop, makers collective, record shop, antiques were among the arrivals), it helped the town win a Great British High Streets Award and taught us a lot that we’ve since taken to other places and continue to…

🙏 Thank you Wantage…!

As a Ps it’s worth saying that this town didn’t and still doesn’t have a BID but they’ve been crucial in a number of #TheVacantShopsAcademy locations we’ve worked since.

Seems like a question that’s a long way from our typical threads on tackling #highstreet vacancy.

🚽 But around half of the ‘next steps’ narratives we share with #TheVacantShopsAcademy locations we’re working with on that issue are less directly about measures related to the empty units themselves and more about #placemaking: street scene, furniture, #streetart, toilets, signage, wayfinding, events, promotion and the like.

🔑 It’s part of an exercise we try where we’ll take the local team to look at an empty unit and ask them to list all the things an agent or landlord should do to get it let. Then ask them to turn round, back to the unit and look out and list all the things they see with that perspective which make it harder to find an occupier – issues the ‘place’ working together could fix.

Benches are often on the list. Look tatty, put people off sitting on them, droppings and litter magnets.

🔧 Actually I could’ve started the post with the same question about utility boxes or bins or bollards, phone boxes, notice boards & more. Are all those in your place looking the best they can be…? If not, which of your neighbour places has found a way to get it done…?

So budgets are tight, we’ve other priorities, we don’t have the staff now. But we need find a way – it makes a huge difference to pride in place, footfall, dwell time, inspiring ambassadors for your town or city centre and return visits, inward investment and of course vacancy.

🤔 Or is it just me…?