A prominent retail consultant has presented a six-point strategy to business leaders that he claims could restore footfall and trade in Aberdeen city centre to “almost pre-Covid levels”.
Jonathan De Mello, founder of JDM Retail and a specialist with more than 25 years’ experience advising towns and cities across the UK on retail strategy and regeneration, unveiled the findings of his independently commissioned Retail and Property Strategy at a business breakfast held at the Douglas Hotel on Market Street on Monday, 23 February. The event was organised by Aberdeen Inspired, the city’s Business Improvement District body, and was attended by traders, business groups, city centre partners and key stakeholders.
The strategy was commissioned by Aberdeen Inspired with financial support from Aberdeen City Council. It was designed to assess the current state of the city centre market, identify gaps in the retail, leisure and hospitality offer, benchmark Aberdeen against comparable cities, and set out practical steps to attract brands capable of adding value and diversity to the city’s commercial core.
More than one in five units on Union Street currently stand empty, with major national brands having retreated from the high street over the past decade — a trend accelerated by the pandemic and the structural shift toward online retail. De Mello, who has previously worked on regeneration programmes in Nottingham, Sheffield and Swansea, was brought in to diagnose those structural issues and propose targeted solutions.
“What we’re doing is diagnosing the issues and then coming up with solutions to essentially say ‘we should look at the independent quarter or global fashion brands’, for example,” De Mello said. “What we want to do is take Aberdeen up the hierarchy locally, but also nationally as well. So really it’s just addressing the structural issues we’ve seen in the sector, the decline of the High Street, what we can do to change that and also looking at future-proofing the city through the new things that are coming in.”
The strategy takes an evidence-based, place-specific approach, focusing on what retail, leisure and hospitality mix would best complement Aberdeen’s existing offer and strengthen its appeal to both residents and visitors. The recommendations form a six-point plan aimed at increasing visitor frequency and spend in the city centre.
The strategy’s main points are:
- Focus on letting prominent voids – most notably the department store units.
- Improve footfall permeability between Union Square and the rest of the core retail circuit
- Tackle the decline of Union Street
- Focus efforts on core areas, rationalising the retail offer in peripheral areas.
- Encourage better utilisation of public realm in core city areas
- Improve traffic controls
Mr De Mello pointed out that everyone will have to get involved, from the council to landlords and even himself, with his role is attract ‘big brands’ into Aberdeen. The hope is that landlords of empty units will assist him with this.
“We go from a £338m city to a half-a-billion city. That’s kind of, to a certain extent, where we were, maybe even before Covid,” Mr De Mello told the room.
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“I think it’s almost going back to where we were, but that is where we need to be.
“We can achieve this. It’s not insurmountable by any means, but we do need the concerted effort from all the people in this room to actually achieve it.
“And that goes along with the owners of these properties because without them we can’t do anything.”
