Busy and exciting start to August ahead…!
Really looking forward to taking our ‘audit, engage, encourage, promote’ approach to tackling #highstreet vacancy into three new locations.
We start this week working with the town centres team at Carmarthenshire County Council which will take us to Llanelli, Carmarthen and Ammanford.
Then mid-month we’re back to check in with colleagues on Crewe town centre – a place that’s seeing intriguing progress on getting its empty units back in play.
Our August ‘24 ‘audit’ there logged a high teens percentage vacancy but in the year since:
There’ve been a number of new openings – the latest of them this weekend;
- Word from agents is that #retail, #hospitality and community uses are looking to deliver more of those before the 2025 lettings season is through;
And – perhaps most significantly of all – there’s now been progress on the five largest empty non-shopping centre buildings: one with work well underway to re-purpose its upper floors, two more in planning for the same, and the last of the set both having recently changed ownership via auction so we’re watching closely how that impacts efforts to get them occupied.
With a number of other major developments and public realm improvements in and around the town centre starting to come on stream and the ‘Repurposing our High Streets’ / Open in Crewe grant scheme continuing to make a difference to the business case for would-be occupiers, it’s little wonder one of the private investors involved here said this week:
“It’s truly exciting times for Crewe and we are delighted to be playing our part.”
It’ll be great to catch up during our visit on all that’s occurring there.
So as we get towards the typically full-on run to Christmas in the ‘25 lettings season, it’d be interesting to hear if your place is seeing #HighStreetPositives too…?
