Not tackling vacancy…? Why…?

🤔 So why – I was asked this week – are more places not working on reducing the number of empty shops they have…? Varying reasons.

• Other priorities;
• Lack of capacity, skills, resources, funding;

💷 Preference for the ‘masterplanning’ route or focusing on a few ‘big ticket’ projects hoping they will fix the whole vacancy issue;

• Pigeon-holing dealing with empty units as ‘just an agents-landlords thing’, or thinking that ‘death of the #highstreet’ means there’s no demand for empty units;
• Lack of belief that the council or BID can make a difference on this.

Or some combo of all those.

It’s why the story of Union Street, Aberdeen, where agents, landlords, businesses, community, council, BID and others are successfully tackling its vacancy challenge together, is so powerful.

📉 It tells us that you can have a headline vacancy rate significantly above 20% and drop it into the mid-teens.

Does your place need to do the same…?

Let us know…