Town Centre Management

The GJR team have a wealth of experience and are passionate about creating successful places to work, live, and enjoy. We provide creative and commercially focused services to respond to many of the challenges facing our town centres.

Economic Development Plan

Town and city centres are becoming increasingly challenged, pressures on local economies, cuts in public funding and competition from alternative centres are all having their affect.

GJR can offer economic development advice to help design sustainable solutions to many of the issues and challenges faced by Town, City, and Business Improvement District Managers. We have a breadth of services to assist town centre development and importantly, services that have a commercial focus and help to maintain sustainable growth.

It is becoming increasingly important to:

  • Open up meaningful dialogue with local authorities, and encourage existing enterprise to reinvest into the town/city instead of seeking moves elsewhere
  • Promote an area’s economic unique selling points and attract new start-ups
  • Support the development of business incubation units
  • Retain and encourage local entrepreneurship
  • Drive additional footfall
  • Research and insight
  • Economic development strategies that benefit local business and are convergent with Local Authority policies and action plans
  • Identification of additional funding streams to support the long-term strategic delivery
  • The benefit of local economic assessments and how they support future growth
  • Business Retention & Expansion programmes
  • CSR plans that benefit both local business and their operating environment
  • Bespoke inward investment planning
  • High Street health checks and analysis
  • Employment and skills action plan to enable Level 3 attainment

Town Centre Partnerships

GJR seeks to help retail and leisure destinations and commercial districts create a sense of place, which will leave a positive impression in the minds of consumers and workers, allowing loyalty to grow to the benefit of commercial occupiers, land owners and developers and public agencies.

Many retail destinations and commercial districts have not developed to meet the needs of this increasingly demanding market, the experience itself is often poor. Existing and new occupiers, together with their landlords and local authorities should be encouraged to enhance the quality of the street and stimulate innovative Place Management to add value to the current position. Day-to-day housekeeping of the high street needs to be complemented with a sustainable and relevant offer for the future.

In order to compete with alternative centres, the internet and out-of-town retailers, town centres must put in place visionary, strategic and strong operational teams. Without competent, motivated and collaborative high street governance town centres will struggle to complete.

Building a Town Team

GJR will help identify opportunities for different local stakeholders to come together. Owners, large and small shopkeepers, council representatives, politicions, local businesses and service providers, and residents all have a role to play in creating and maintaining a vibrant town centre for all to enjoy and prosper.

A Town Team is more than a series of meetings. GJR will provide an environment for local stakeholders to share the ambition of revitalising your town or city or 'your place'.

Together with a shared vision of the future and shaped by the people who will use your high street, a carefully constructed Town Team has the ability and skills to make a difference.

  • View the high street as a brand which needs nurturing and communicating
  • Inspire and engage with the public and get people visiting high streets again
  • Recognise the uniqueness of ‘your place’ based on its history, communities and aspirations
  • Focus on making high streets accessible, attractive and safe
  • Decide the appropriate mix of shops and services for your area

Retail Strategy

When asked most respondents to a survey will say the range of shops is the main driver for choosing a particular location to visit; usually accompanied by parking and transportation considerations, leisure and eating facilities and quality of the environment.

Therefore the mix of shops and accompanying offer is vitally important to the vitality of individual towns and cities.

All too often fragmented ownership and managing agent representatives will seek out the highest rents possible leading to unhelpful clusters of coffee shops, mobile phone outlets or charity shops. All these uses have a place but in a well managed mix of uses. Encouraging and providing creative environments for independent, niche and small businesses can provide important unique selling points for a location.

GJR works with Town Centres to develop and help implement retail strategies to endorse the positioning and identity of the location and create a vibrant and interesting offer for all that shop, visit, work and live in the area. GJR would welcome the opportunity of discussing your retail strategy.

  • Identify quality retailers that will position the location as an exciting destination with a distinctive and stimulating retail mix
  • Ensure the shopping is accompanied by an appropriate mix of food & beverage operators
  • Develop a retail plan for now and the future
  • Attract new shoppers and encourage existing working and residential communities to take advantage of the offer close at hand
  • Supplement the retail strategy with a complimentary marketing and promotional plan

To help achieve these objectives GJR places a high priority on understanding stakeholders, maintaining effective relationships and communicating well.

  • Create and maintain effective working relationships with landlords and managing agents
  • Developing innovative leasing approaches that support the development of new and exciting mix of shopping and associated uses
  • An occupier focus which delivers a quality if service and improves business retention
  • Encourage business growth through a fresh approach to tenant relationships

Integrated Place Management

The need for centres to ensure the quality of their environment and public space meet customer expectations has never been greater. By not providing the level of services required centres will increasingly find it difficult to compete and visitors and customers will be encouraged to experiment with alternative offers and locations.

The key objective of integrated management planning is to provide a mechanism for ring‐fencing multiple revenue sources to fund the services needed to provide high quality public spaces. Private sector interests are often prepared to contribute to maintenance of the public realm provided that their investment is used to leverage greater influence and the services meet the needs of the public space.

Together with a shared vision of the future and shaped by the people who will use your high street, a carefully constructed Town Team has the ability and skills to make a difference.

  • View the high street as a brand which needs nurturing and communicating
  • Inspire and engage with the public and get people visiting high streets again
  • Recognise the uniqueness of ‘your place’ based on its history, communities and aspirations
  • Focus on making high streets accessible, attractive and safe
  • Decide the appropriate mix of shops and services for your area

Developing an Integrated Management Plan

Integrated place management models provide an innovative approach to leveraging additional funding, improving operational services and delivering more effective management of public space. In doing so they improve the experience of public spaces to meet the expectations of visitors, investors, businesses, and residents.

Key to the success of integrated management models is a strong relationship between public authorities and private investment. GJR works with both private and public sector partners to create an environment of joint working.

In developing an integrated approach GJR will:

  • Outline the purpose of integrated management
  • Seek political support from the public authorities
  • Identify private sector partners
  • Set out clear roles and responsibilities
  • Introduce governance arrangements

Integrated management models provide an innovative mechanism for delivering sustainable improvements to the management public space. Successfully implemented they can:

  • Leverage additional investment
  • Provide greater influence for the private sector
  • Deliver enhanced and additional operational services
  • Maintain the benefit of capital investment made into public spaces
  • Leverage adjacent private sector investment in buildings and recruitment of quality occupiers
  • Attract additional commercial income
  • Improve the experience of public realm
  • Better commercial performance and deliver a return on investment

Business Operating Costs

As overall business costs have increased in recent years so there has been a greater focus placed upon the reduction in operation costs.

Harnessing the collective purchasing power of business in a particular location can meet individual businesses economic, corporate social responsibility and environmental ambitions. By utilising the collective purchasing power of business, overall operating costs can be reduced to provide tangible benefits.

Most businesses face escalating operating costs including:

  • Utilities
  • Telecoms
  • Pat Testing
  • Waste
  • Recycling
  • Handyman
  • Pest Control
  • Taxi's
  • Couriers

Working with our specialist partners, GJR will audit current usage patterns, compare these against both nationally agreed arrangements and local suppliers to provide the best possible price for individual commodities and services.

In addition to cost savings many of the services have additional benefits of carbon reduction and sustainable working methods. For example most business communities produce waste, which ends up in landfill. We utilise zero to landfill principles to maximise environmental benefit. In addition our waste management plans often result in free recycling services to business, which offers savings to the bottom line and higher numbers of businesses choosing to recycle.

Make contact with us now to discuss your joint procurement opportunities and begin the process for reducing operating costs across your business community.