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Even at local level up here there is talk of certain retailers and food chains ( I will not name them for fear of blighting their prospects) of late trying to do deals (threatening insolvency if not agreed) with landlords re rents, whilst such softening will not directly impact my employers (we do not rent out that sort of property) any high street rent softening will cascade down into the secondary/tertiary arena where we do operate. (albeit we do not have that much retail space) In food even non nationals are feeling the pinch, those carry outs not embracing delivery suffering.
This issue is not just retail, office space could over next few decades see a slackening demand if AI increases and head count reduces, we are already seeing former Edinburgh offices (especially New Town) going back into the housing stock, I can see this continuing.
We have already internally earmarked which of our properties might readily become residential, which will likely get demolished for residential and which will likely stay as they are into the future, these sorts of changes are likely going to continue to impact city centres for quite a time to come.
I find it ironic that in the week these long established businesses went to the wall with on line trading listed as the main course with likes of Amazon, eBay the main culprits whose operation came to a standstill because of 6 inches of snow that they were not able to deliver any products.
In Newcastle I have noticed a big trend in repurposing office space into serviced offices/incubator hubs on easy on easy out basis. They all fill very rapidly with occupancy of 90%+ achieved. Their is also a lot of residential going back into city centre, new that student lets seem to have peaked, there seems to be a fresh approach to building city centre apartments.
Longer term we are in the middle of a huge retail transition from trudging round the shops at a weekend,to buying stuff online. The highstreet has huge overcapacity issues now.
This has far from worked itself through yet in terms of high street rents and business rates, but in 20 years time I would expect to see much small retail space in place in city centres, in a much small footprint, concentrated almost exclusively on clothing, restaurants and leisure. Out of town stores are dying a slow death too. Why get in your car and drive to B&Q and poke about for 30 minutes when you can buy cheaper and better quality products from Screwfix [same owners] and either get it delivered, or pick it up from the counter.
I am not necessarily in agreement with the idea that the high street is dying with online taking over. There is no doubt that there will be changes but specialist shops are springing up as quickly as the larger ones are dying. This has been going on for a long time. Alders was one casualty.
There will always be winners and losers in the retail market. Maplin is a specialist niche store but this has struggled just as much as the larger stores. I suspect because it wasn't "techie" enough for the real geeks and too "techie" for the casual shoppers.
Woolworths was another big casualty a few years ago, but they were overcharging in a lot of their product areas, especially CDs/DVDs. Interestingly, Wilko seem to have positioned themselves into the space vacated by Woolworths.
I personally would not be too surprised to see W H Smith in trouble soon as I'm not entirely sure what they offer these days that you can't get online or in other stores.