Are Town Centre Investment Zones the big idea to unite vested interests?
Back in 2014 when I was involved in the Government’s Future High Street Forum, collective asset management and investment seemed like one of the few genuine ‘big ideas’ on the table.
For a time the thinking progressed under the careful stewardship of Chair Liz Peace and a bringing together of models including that advocated by Peter Brett Associates. The approach now properly has a name(s) too: Town Centre Investment Management (TCIM- the process) through Town Centre Investment Zones (TCIZ -the place).
Attraction for investors
Two years on following research and clarification of the idea, Town Centre Investment Management began to feel like big thinking that might transform the fate of many town and city centres and deliver collective benefits?
As the report published at the time by the British Property Federation observed, it is an approach that seeks to do little more than mirror the collective ownership provided by shopping centres. And of course not all shopping centres are run-away successes! So not that revolutionary or offering proven success! Except of course this is modern-day Britain where any attempt at collective management compared to vested interests is the exception and is likely to attract the confidence of investors.
Local leadership key to sucess
So what will determine take-up and success? The report advocates that strong local leadership is a critical first step and that council master-planning, advocacy by a BID or other group and localism through a Business Neighbourhood Plan can play a positive role. Critical within this would seem an ability to understand and broker necessary trade-offs between community and individual commercial interests so that the resulting town centre masterplan is attractive to investors and deliverable.
The next step is to secure the investment through a trustworthy governance structure, the investment ‘vehicle’ that will manage funds and experienced asset managers able to agree and deliver targets much like for many shopping centres. As well as being facilitators, there is the exciting prospects of local councils having a major commercial stake in their town and city centres by investing their own reserves and potentially pension funds through the new ‘UK Wealth Funds’. We’d also like to see assets like car parks and public spaces brought in to the Investment Zones.
Reducing risks
The report is upbeat that “Investors like High Street retail. It has delivered good long-term performance and yields remain keen for the right stock.” Masterplanning, pooling assets and collective management aims to alleviate many of the risks. The report also points to possible profits from peripheral areas that could be developed for housing as part of masterplanning that concentrates the commercial core of town centres. A focus on the need for delivery structures to be “tax efficient” and calls for “certain concessions such as those that have been given to Housing Zones and Enterprise Zones” shows a lack of total confidence in the model -or perhaps just a bit greediness to have it all!
So are we likely to see a wave of Town Centre Investment Zones being established across the country? The report concludes that the TCIM and TCIZ models are workable and that although well-aligned with High Street investment needs in major cities, the principles can apply to small or even struggling town centres where collective asset management could unlock investment potential. The necessary powers and legal structures already exist. It seems more a case of ‘is there the will rather than the way’. Take-up, the report suggests, will depend on the willingness of local councils to adopt a novel and largely untested approach and the ability to marshal different stakeholder groups to agree a common plan. And in that we come back to the issues that Town Centre Investment Management was devised to overcome, reluctance from different vested interests to work together for the collective good rather than solely fight for their own corner!
Download a copy of the ‘Town Centre Investment Zones Report‘
