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New life for department stores

In the last two years, we have advised on strategies for the repurposing of over 30 former department stores for a wide mix of uses, from international visitor attractions to town centre living. Delivering new uses in vacant department stores is key to efforts to regenerate the high street which has suffered at the hands of a rapidly changing retail market in recent years. Download our infographic below to find out more about the significant economic benefits of these schemes for our town centres.

Research recently published by CoStar^[1] revealed that of the 388 major department stores that had closed since 2016 (including Beales, BHS, Debenhams, Dunnes, House of Fraser and John Lewis), 40% of the space has already been re-let. Whilst 237 stores are currently still empty, 52 have firm plans in place or approval for a change of use or repurposing. In addition to this, landlords and local authorities continue to be active in finding creative new ways of repurposing a large proportion of the remaining vacant department stores. As a result, there are plenty of reasons to be positive about the future of the high street.

We have calculated the sum of the economic benefits generated by the first ten department store conversions we have advised on that have reached planning stage. These projects alone involve more than £1 billion investment and will ultimately support 4,500 jobs. These findings are only the tip of the iceberg, and it is clear that with over 200 other stores awaiting regeneration the repurposed department store still has a very significant economic and social contribution to make to the high street. 

The below downloadable PDF showcases the economic benefits generated by our first ten projects to reach planning stage.

For more information on our work on department store repurposing please contact Chris Pickup or Richard Laming. Please click here to read some of our latest insights on the sector. 

9 September 2021

[1] CoStar (August 2021) Department Stores: Green Shoots After Five Years of Closures