Vacancy tackled, here’s how…!

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.