COMMENT Long before the coronavirus pandemic, many local authorities were faced with the problem of declining town centres and began a trend of buying up precincts and shopping centres.
For the best part of a century, town centres have been moulded around high street retail chains and yet the painful transformation of bricks-and-mortar retail was already in full swing before Covid-19 hit. A lockdown nation of online shoppers will likely have accelerated the pace of change.
There is nothing wrong with authorities investing in local assets per se, although we think the better model is one of strategic, long-term partnerships between councils and investor-developers.
Our relationship with Trafford Council, Greater Manchester, holds two possible lessons.
First, the partnership is built on a bedrock of robust governance procedures, shared risk and long-term horizons. We make investments and decisions as one with success measured over many years.
While our partnership with Trafford is something that has evolved organically through 20 years of working closely on many major projects, it nonetheless provides a template for discrete projects too. It underlines the message that local authorities and experienced development partners can act together as strategic institutional investors.
Second, there needs to be a root-and-branch review of the way our town centres are designed and what they offer, working in partnership with the existing local community. This still might mean buying that ailing shopping centre but then having a new vision for its future.
In the short term, reappraising the retail mix is already a proven successful strategy. Blending experience-based activities with food outlets alongside more independent operators, for instance. Then for the future, consider a masterplan that can add the vibrancy the town centre needs to gain a new lease of life, be that through introducing town-centre living, increasing green space or even reinforcing the centre’s sense of place through cultural hubs.
Back to town centre roots
It’s worth considering the potential lasting impacts of Covid-19 too. People have been pushed back to local and this reconnection will endure where experiences have been positive. In many areas, this may slow or even reverse the flight to city centres from the suburbs.
In Stretford, a suburb close to Manchester, the city centre is at the beginning of its regeneration journey. After purchasing Stretford Mall with the council last year, we’re working with the community on a fundamental reappraisal of the type of town centre it needs in order to thrive.
This extends to not just to how its retail mix needs to evolve to include other assets the community can use, but its layout and design too – our town centres have been built around cars as much as retail chains.
In nearby Altrincham the story is a little different. It is already a pin-up for successful regeneration, helped by its award-winning market. The challenge now is ensuring this positive impact continues to ripple out to the rest of the town centre. After acquiring the Stamford Quarter shopping centre, again with the council, we’re now exploring how we can adapt its offering to better complement the market, including assessing the viability of other uses beyond retail.
Town centres have not looked like attractive bets for investors for several years, which is probably why so many local councils felt they had no other choice but to step in themselves. But in the 1980s and early 1990s the same was true of many northern English city centres, which have now attracted investment, grown and thrived.
What was often ignored then was their strong underlying economic potential and that with the same partnership-led, long-term approach to regeneration between the public and private sector, they could be transformed.
This is part of our DNA and it is why we now look at the satellite towns and suburbs of Greater Manchester as having the same untapped possibilities the city once did. And just as it was then, it will take imagination, staying power and collaboration to make things happen.
Ciara Keeling is chief executive of Bruntwood Works
