COMMENT Across the UK, local people are creating businesses that can help revive and revitalise our city centres. Shared working spaces, urban farms and lending hubs for appliances and tools are just some of the offerings provided by a new type of occupier that are able to develop vital social, economic and climate-resilient infrastructure in our urban landscape.
But it’s not just ESG that is the driver here – supporting community-focused new entrants on to the high street is increasingly making sound commercial sense. It is of course not an entirely new concept, but a major historic barrier has been the lack of access to affordable, secure, long-term land and property.
Over the past few months, Shoosmiths has been working on a project – Platform: a town centre innovation programme – to explore what more can be done to open up town centre property for a more diverse range of occupiers, while ensuring that investors are sufficiently incentivised and supported to bring them into their schemes. The project has emphasised a number of challenges at the heart of our cities, but also a shared willingness across city centre stakeholders to find solutions that will breathe life back into our cities.
Curated streets
A key obstacle to initiatives such as this has been that property owners use buildings more for commercial yield than the provision of social value, and therefore smaller occupiers are prohibited from taking up space due to high rents or lease terms. But, with scars from the pandemic visible in almost every town and city, it is clear our urban landscapes have changed in more ways than one – the new reality is that the two aims of seeing a financial return and providing social impact needn’t be opposing.
The redevelopment of Kingland Crescent in Poole, Dorset, by Legal & General is a great example. Kingland is a new curated shopping street, comprising local independents and SMEs, supporting innovative entrepreneurs to open up alongside the existing Dolphin Shopping Centre. The businesses have been given a shop with no rent or business rates for the first two years, to develop space for community-focused businesses.
However, this isn’t about altruism; the simple fact is that the regeneration of one area of a town or city centre leads to increasing footfall in another. This is further endorsed by the government’s mooted plan in its Levelling Up white paper to give local authorities the power to require landlords to rent out vacant properties to prospective tenants.
Future-proofing our cities and boosting economic performance was also at the heart of Sheffield’s successful bid for £15.8m of the government’s Future High Streets Fund to rejuvenate its high street. The new funding will create social hubs, a multi-use event space and a co-working space, ensuring current redundant space is repurposed with climate-resilient greenery and seating, alongside new lighting. A key part of the project includes a shop building repurposed to house community entrepreneurs as a new anchor. This regeneration will of course drive social impact, but will also boost economic performance and return.
Bywater Properties’ Smithfield Yard scheme in Belfast is another example that sought to overcome initial local concerns around the development, by assembling a placemaking group comprised of entrepreneurs and community-led businesses from the public and private sectors. Bywater delegated decision-making powers to this group on the selection and balance of business types to occupy the space, and the rent terms and rent levels to charge. The scheme has been designed to become a hub for community-focused and entrepreneurial businesses to grow and thrive alongside other more established brands.
Dormant assets
A common trait across these projects is the effective channels of communication between stakeholders so that views are heard and accommodated where possible. The symbiotic structure of a city has never been more apparent, and a lack of conversation will only result in more self-serving decision-making and underused and uneconomic areas. However, the overarching consideration for any investor is often, of course, a commercial benefit of some sort. What we see from these examples, however, is that – with the right strategy – economic performance can be achieved through more creative routes. Plus, the announcement in the Levelling Up white paper that £44m is to be unlocked from the Dormant Assets Scheme to support charities and social enterprises, suggests a growing appetite from government to drive this agenda.
So, with around 50 shops closing every day in the UK and more than one in seven retail premises estimated to be vacant, it is clear that our city centres need to be revived and reshaped. The precise model of delivery will differ from place to place but, as consumer habits continue to evolve and the face of retail shifts, the question of what comes next is there to be answered.
Creative and holistic community-led development has the power to propel economic resurgence and, when mixed with more traditional premises including retail, residential and offices, increasingly makes good commercial sense.
Nathan Rees is a partner at Shoosmiths
