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The department store is dying in front of our eyes, with even blue-chip operators like John Lewis closing locations opened as recently as five years ago. Of course, not every department store in the UK will close — but huge swathes of them are shut already, leaving landlords with the quandary of what to do with big empty boxes often totalling hundreds of thousands of square feet.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution for empty department stores, where numbers have dropped by more than 30% in the past five years, according to Lendy, but after a period of mourning, confusion and reflection, owners and developers are beginning to undertake the process of converting department stores to new uses.
There are plenty of ideas out there, taking in every conceivable property type including offices, coworking, residential, hotels, cinemas, food halls, libraries, crazy golf and even, yes, a little bit of new retail. Bisnow’s interactive map charts some of the myriad repurposing schemes underway or recently completed. But how does the…
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