Unlocking ownership and commercial viability to widen the high street offer

Part of Ramsgate’s town centre was designated a High Street Heritage Action Zone (HAZ) by Historic England. Funding was allocated to help repair and reuse vacant buildings and for community engagement and cultural activities to help revitalise the historic high street.

To determine how funds would be best spent, Thanet District Council appointed oneday and The Assembly Line to carry out a commercial study and provide evidence-based recommendations on the opportunities within the HAZ.

BACKGROUND

The aim of the project was to enable and support the council, property owners and agents to make informed decisions on commercially viable and sustainable uses for the town centre’s properties.

Ramsgate still had a recognisable, if rundown, town centre used by locals despite the rise of out-of-town retail locally. There were some good-sized, well-configured units that had been vacant for some time and a number of smaller units that were generally occupied by independent retailers.

Refurbishment work on some smaller units indicated there was still an appetite for space as these had been leased for a mix of uses, from pop-ups to a café and yoga studio.

Our recommendations needed to include options for short-term ‘meantime use’ up to 12 months, medium-term use (12 to 24 Months) and long-term (36 months or more). In addition, uses needed to align with plans set out in the town’s overall masterplan for which the council had successfully secured funding.

WHAT WE DID

We conducted a comprehensive review of the town centre’s existing offer including retail, leisure, services, hospitality, arts, culture, tourism, heritage, attractions, facilities and the built environment.

Then we undertook stakeholder mapping, canvassing the council and wider stakeholders. From this baseline, we could appraise the market value of properties within the town centre and identify appropriate rental values for the various commercial property types and condition categories.

This was followed by a gap analysis to identify the types of operators and users looking for space within the town centre.

We then drew up a number of recommendations, including an action plan. Outlining short, medium and long term actions, the plan identified the need for ‘quick wins’ and highlighted areas of focus for the council which were aesthetics, culture and governance, activation, the town centre offer and its appeal, meeting spaces and places and connectivity.

There were a series of direct recommendations which supported our findings that:

• The town centre is lacking activation from a limited night time economy to markets and temporary pop-ups and an offer that goes beyond retail.
  There is a lack of wayfinding, particularly linking the train station to the harbour.
• Letting agents are doing a good job with the empty buildings.
• There is a need to intervene when buildings become empty rather than later.
  There is a lack of information about how property occupiers need to maintain and refurbish listed properties or those in a conservation zone.
• There is a need to reduce the impact of climate change on the town centre which needs to strike a balance between protecting the environment and supporting the local economy.

As a result of this assessment work and our recommendations, we were further commissioned to develop a commercial model for cowork space in a council-owned building in the town centre.