Wander your #highstreet in the late afternoon or early evening and look up.
How many lights do you see on the upper floors…? Lots, hardly any…?
Do the same a bit later just to check. Same result…?
It’s not very scientific I know, but the idea is it gives you a quick test of what, if any, occupation there is of those upper floors.
Is the ground floor or a separate business using them – maybe for storage or office use. Or possibly, if there are lights later, they’ve gone to residential.
It’s a valuable question for #placemaking and #property colleagues to ask because un- and under-used upper floors is a potential opportunity.
If you can get them back into play you can adjust the economics of the building, maybe overcome a barrier to the ground floor being let and – from a wider perspective – add footfall to your town or city centre which helps that too.
If this is an issue in your please, especially if you’re on the case with a strategy to put it right, we’d love to hear from you…
We’re really excited to be headed back to #Aberdeen this month to complete the research phase of our Union Street upper floors study with Aberdeen Inspired and the City Council, funded by UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.
We’re hoping that the findings will not only add to the impressive strides being made to tackle ground floor vacancy there, but also be useful insights for other town and city centres.
Watch this (un- and under-used) space.
