A mix of retail and imagination key to creating vibrant centres

Town and city centres are being reshaped as retail assets are being reimagined and replaced by student, co-living and BTR accommodation, hospitality and leisure operators, life sciences, and cultural and community hubs.

As more and more shopping is being done online and flexible working is permanently disrupting the weekday rhythms of many office workers, there is a desire and a demand to find new purposes for tired retail sites.

This round table, hosted by TheBusinessDesk.com and Corstorphine & Wright, brought together specialists from across the property sector to discuss how the centres are changing and what they expect to see happen in the future.

Andy Brown, director at Corstorphine & Wright, set the scene. He said: “The challenge and the opportunity is how we understand the place, the needs of that place, the history of it, and the people that are currently there in the community.

“It’s about being able to tap into that and pull together uses that will bring together and create that destination venue with a mix of uses that’s going to be needed to keep that place active and revitalise it in the future.”

Andy Brown, Corstorphine & Wright

The starting point, as set out by Jamie Whitfield, director of commercial development at New River, is “retail is not dead”.

He said: “Physical retail is alive, but the landscape has changed immeasurably.

“The majority of shopping centres were built in the 1960s and 1980s. They’re no longer fit for purpose in the new world.

“But that’s not to say that they don’t serve a purpose as part of a thriving town. Invariably, if you’ve got a failing shopping centre, you have got a failing town.

“They are very well served in terms of amenity and existing transport infrastructure, and therefore, present a huge opportunity with a bit of imagination.”

John Linnell from Mott Macdonald agreed that retail isn’t dead – “I like to try my clothes on, I don’t just want to shop on Amazon,” he said – but it can be supported by other uses.

“Sheffield has got a plan to build 20-30,000 houses in the city centre,” he said. “The old shopping centres have been given opportunities – there is a lot of mixed use in there as well as the retail offering. For me, it doesn’t all have to be retail.”

Jonathan Morgan, partner at Zenko Properties, reminded everyone he is “a huge believer in the value of reintroducing residential into towns”.

He said: “I think that the opportunity we have at the moment comes out of the weight of capital that is pointed at the living sectors – traditional resi, purpose built student, BTR, single family rental, co-living which is an emerging sector.

“There’s a massive weight of capital, and I think that’s an opportunity, if we address that correctly, to change the shape of some of our town and city centres.”

Amanda Beresford, Schofield Sweeney

Amanda Beresford, head of planning at Schofield Sweeney highlighted the relatively-new flexibility that has been introduced into the permitted development rights, which will allow smaller-scale changes.

“The relatively new Class E which allows shops to convert to a range of other uses without having to get planning permission is an opportunity for the sector to reimagine their assets, and also the even newer Class M, which I’m sure the government will probably be pushing in its drive to increase housing,” she said.

“It’s an opportunity to use the assets more flexibly. But it’s also a challenge because the less retail there is in a place, the less vibrant it can be. There is that balance that we’ll need to manage in this sector as the new flexibilities in the planning system take hold.”

Jonathan Tarbutt, urban design director at Corstorphine & Wright, believes there is “a major opportunity to repopulate town and city centres”.

He said: “Understanding the historic fabric is our starting point. Whether it’s selective keyhole surgery in a centre to try and repurpose it or bring users into part of it, which we’re doing in some places, or whether it’s wholesale redevelopment that is needed.

“The question is ‘how does that knit into the existing fabric sensitively?’, because the way town centres were made historically is so different from the way they are made now. Reconciling those two is a big challenge, but also an exciting opportunity because they’re all very different.”

Paul Taylor, managing director at Creative Space Management, added: “Our cities do change and they’ve been changing for a long time.

“There’s an opportunity as our shopping habits change and as our living habits change and our working patterns change, to revitalise our city centres and our high streets, make them more experiential as they are on the continent, make them somewhere that you’re just not going to go to shop, you’re going to go to eat, to meet, to greet. Careful curation of these spaces brings huge opportunities.”

Emma Gomersal, Lichfields

Emma Gomersal, associate director at Lichfields, said: “One of the biggest challenges is staying relevant and doing something innovative. Quite a few town centres have received a lot of funding from government, and there was a lot of competition for that funding.

“In order to get hold of that funding, they looked at what’s different, that’s going to be attractive, and be a different proposition. It requires Imaginative thinking, so a challenge and also an opportunity.”

The imaginative thinking needs to be part of a wider, coherent plan for neighbourhoods and communities.

Rachel Groves, project director at Moda, said: “One of our challenges is always about getting the right mix of uses on some of our neighbourhoods – whether their existing neighbourhoods or evolving neighbourhoods – and being able to support the changing demographics in city centres.

“For example, that can be health and wellbeing, whether it be medical and dental uses, and having that wider mix of uses to support the growing residential market in city centres.”

Civic Engineers’ Billy Brand echoed the bigger picture view when making decisions about existing retail sites.

“We should approach this reimagining retail from a retrofit-first approach, retaining where we can,” he said. “But that extends out into the streetscapes as well, we need to retrofit our streets.

“It’s all about placemaking, bringing in things like blue green infrastructure and active travel, and not just seeing the buildings as one element. We need to look at it holistically.”

Turner & Townsend director Michael Grace agreed that reimagining retail assets is a key part of a wider regeneration offer.

“It’s absolutely essential to get independents into city centres, where the heartbeat is,” he said.

“We need to bring our towns and cities back into the community as much as anything. We’re all fighting for quality in our cities.”