In the English seaside town of Poole, a major asset management company, Legal & General Investment Management , rented 10 storefronts spaces at no cost for two years to a diverse set of small businesses on a depressed shopping street in the city center.
The commercial street, called Kingland Crescent, has since made a remarkable turnaround and is attracting significantly more foot traffic and patrons. Foot traffic is up 16% over pre-pandemic levels,. And the small business owners — five of which are now paying to rent their spaces — were given an opportunity to grow that they might not otherwise have had. The shopping street now features a gin bar, a plant store, a restored furniture shop, and a coffee shop.
"It was a dirty, funny walkway with boarded-up shops. Now it's vibrant, upbeat, colourful," Hope Dean, the owner of a plant shop that was one of the 10 businesses given free rent, told The Guardian. "We're not just doing this to do a nice thing for the people of Poole," Matt Soffair, a retail researcher at LGIM,
."We are also doing this because we do believe that in the long term, all these initiatives will create cash flow."starting a £10 million program to give small businesses rent-free space, as well as marketing and store-design help, on Oxford Street — a busy downtown shopping avenue in the West End of London. The initiative is designed to replace"low quality" existing shops, including American candy stores, with"innovative local businesses," BBC News