Repurposing town centres to sustainabe uses
This is the second in a series of long-read blogs and over the next few weeks we will be investigating what it means to undertake sustainable repurposing, through different uses, masterplanning, funding and policy.
For further detail, Savills’ recent research on Re:Imagining Retail is available here.
Tom Whittington
Places to live, work, play and socialise
Virtually every town centre is facing the challenge how to reimagine redundant retail spaces and adapt them to fulfill other local needs. This is a wider structural challenge that requires towns to increase the number of uses and users to create vibrant, busy places.
Many Towns have already explored this concept of reimaging retail in their Town Investment Plans. This blog extends these discussions to consider the potential for delivering flexible, blended uses in town centres to secure long term resilience for Towns and the people who use them. It also presents further ideas which you may find useful to incorporate into your Business Cases.
Savills’ recent research has shown that retail still has its place, but perhaps not as retail only places. We need to rebrand them as consumer hubs that are more than just shopping, but instead meet other social and civic needs. A rightsized retail offer remains important, but the nature of that retail offer is key and amenity will often be at the heart of the appeal for attracting residents and businesses alike. There are all sorts of forms of amenity, such as cafes, leisure, doctors, vets, cultural attractions, yoga studios, or wellbeing concepts that are often more beneficial to consumer hub locations than branded retail chains.
But what other uses should Towns consider for increasing town centre activity and reducing redundant spaces? Below, we set out four key concepts for helping you build strong strategic cases for regeneration projects – places to live, places to work, alternative uses, and cross-pollination of uses.. Many of these themes are being developed in larger regional cities, but the concepts can be adapted to fit the needs at a smaller scale.
Places to live
Many homes are set to be delivered where the ‘retail core’ of towns and cities once stood, and what better way to generate consumer demand than to get people living in the heart of our town centres.
In the five years to June 2020, over 36,000 new homes were built in the very heart of our towns and cities. That is set to be eclipsed with a total of 68,000 new homes in town centres currently under construction and a further 173,000 with planning consent (England & Wales).
We are often asked whether people want to live in town centres. The answer is, ‘Yes, when the offer and (perhaps more importantly) the amenities are there.’ Town centre residential projects should go hand-in-hand with developing the wider offer for leisure and community uses. Towns have a significant opportunity to improve their town centres now to deliver places that provide a sustainable long-term future.
There are more and more proactive developers seeking suitable sites across the country (not solely the more affluent markets). Planning needs to be supportive, particularly where schemes build with social impact, but funding partnerships might be required to assist viability.
If we’re serious about creating sustainable communities, we need a greater mix of people living in the same spaces. This requires a rethink in how we build communities and how we attract residents from of a wider range of age and income groups. This mix of residents can provide greater benefits to the economy. For example, older people and people working from home can provide an increase in footfall during times of day that businesses are usually quiet—increasing the viability of the businesses in that place. We have already begun to see this in the new leisure businesses which have opened in more residential neighborhoods during lockdown.
Places to work
Workspaces are proving a key component to diversifying town centre uses and fulfilling other property shortfalls. In terms of employment space, we’re seeing increasing interest from co-working offices, maker spaces, light industrial and life sciences developers looking at town centre retail assets. The emphasis is on jobs growth and daytime activity.
Many towns are being impacted by departing retailers that often leave large, unlettable shop footprints. Towns should prioritise these schemes, as they often have prominent locations with the voids impacting on consumer perception of the town centre. Their large floorplates mean they have broader potential to be transformed into something more economically- or socially-beneficial. In fact, the best conversions may prove more valuable in the future than the previous retail incumbent.
Several department store conversions are currently underway countrywide looking to bring vacant stores back into active use. Floor configurations can be challenging for retrofitting to some uses, but flexible offices in particular can work well, with significant growth anticipated in this sector outside of traditional office locations.
These schemes are increasing weekday footfall and further diversifying town centre offers. Instead of standing empty, shoppers see landmark buildings remain an important part of the community townscape.
The Towns Fund Data Dashboard provides a variety of recent data on your specific Town, and tabs such as Employment & Labour may be particularly relevant when building the case for new business spaces in your town.
Alternative sectors
We’re seeing increasing interest from alternative sectors, such as life science, education, medical and wellbeing, which will prove to be increasingly important for regenerating our town centres, by bringing in a greater range of town centre users who will support local retail.
The US has lots of examples of this approach, because addressing retail oversupply has spanned two decades. Lessons from the US could provide insight for what we can expect to see in the UK over the coming decade. This includes universities and hospitals taking the whole upper floor of a failing shopping centre, with retail and leisure facilities remaining on the ground floor to support the needs of visitors and surrounding communities.
Closer to home, science laboratories are taking town centre space, schools are being built above supermarkets, and further education providers are looking at ex-department stores as potential sites. The University of Gloucester has just completed a deal to buy the Debenhams in the town centre for a new campus. The NHS are increasingly looking at shopping centres for medical practices and vaccination centres.
Towns can benefit from actively pursuing alternatives to retail, such as health, wellbeing and amenity, in cementing the importance these places have to their communities.
Cross pollination of uses
The results may seem an extreme solution to the problems within retail, but we must recognise that if the problems themselves are wide-ranging, the solutions may be equally so.
In addition, bringing different uses into blended and diversified spaces helps with identity, vibrancy and footfall within towns, with different uses feeding off each other.
Clearly not every option works in every place, and approaches will be different for each Town. In prime settings, there are often more commercially-viable solutions, whereas other locations will often require more socially-driven solutions and require a more significant intervention from the local authority. Where local authorities own their town centre assets, or joint venture with other investors, they are in a better position to plan for the long term. Alternative uses may not pay the same income as retail, but those occupants may sign longer leases, are not always subject to the same economic cycles, and can contribute footfall to other businesses.
With genuine mixed uses that work together in harmony, we are seeing positive results in re-energising retail places. Increased occupational demand leads to enhanced urban regeneration of neighbouring sites and benefit to retail and leisure uses that still serve an important function in these places.
You may be able to incorporate ideas raised here into your Business Cases as you formalise your Strategic Case and consider the commercial deliverability of your projects. If you would like to discuss any specific topics further, please talk to your Town Coordinator, who will be able to request tailored property advice from the Savills team, or request an Expert Drop-in Hour.