The Empty Shops Thread - your area?

ukbill69

I live and have a shop in Hertfordshire and our town is 100% fully occupied.

indierocker85

I'd say in Scarborough there is about 5% vacant, but the rent asked is very very influencial on the vacant statuses, not to mention the business rates charged.

JasX

Croydon, South London

Bit of a mixed bag, there are 2 large centre of town shopping centers as well as the high street all of which took a bit of a downturn in 2007-2008 have been 15-20% empty since.

The place remains busy with shoppers and a number of the 'major chain' stores have clearly been spending money refurbishing and smartening up their stores (but not taking more space).

Also alot of the 'non-shop' space in the shopping centers has been turned over to 'mini retail' space over the last 2 years with small stalls/carts/prefab sandwich bar type things popping up in the middle of concourses/in the space under elevators etc etc.

I guess overall a good sign, demand seems there and there are signs of new things springing up, perhaps the rents of actual shop units is particularly steep in this town so new startups have been forced into being a little creative regarding their business space.

also on the plus side a fair few bars/clubs have gone out of business and stand empty coupled with a very marked decline in chavs vomiting/fighting in the street at weekends.... my theory is the banks stopping giving out credit cards out to them hand over fist which they had no means to ever pay off are behind things

theesel1994

I've just had the weirdest experience.
I walked into my local newsagents that I've been buying the same weekly newspaper for the past 18 years. I have it ordered in for me as it is from another area. The two women were in the shop as usual standing where they usually stand. But there was nothing in the shop whatsoever apart from the till. Even the tiles on the wall had gone. There were customers paying for newspapers that get delivered. It's now going to be a mobile phone repair shop. The two women looked quite bemused as well.

Ah well, that will save me £1.40 a week in newspapers (I've also had another weekly newspaper ordered for the last 10 years) and £1.95 a fortnight for a computer magazine.