The Long Way Round an Empty Department Store

I tend to think of a department store as a destination, but its entrances deserve more attention. Where a store has doors on two or three streets, people may use it as a route as well as a place to buy things. They come in from the bus stop and leave towards the market, perhaps buying nothing. Once those doors are locked, the distance between two familiar places changes, even though neither has moved.

The alternative route might run past a loading bay, a blank return frontage and a service road. That matters differently to different people. A longer walk is an irritation if you are fit and travelling light. With shopping bags, a walking aid or a child who has had enough, it can be a reason not to bother. The shop beyond the closed exit loses a possible visit without changing its stock, prices or opening hours.

The shops beside the wrong door

In occupier work, I have learned to be suspicious of the phrase ‘good location’ when it stands alone. A small shop can occupy a good location because of one crossing, one entrance or one dependable stream of people. Its frontage has not deteriorated when the department store shuts. Its position in the daily journey has. That is a harder loss to see from a plan showing the same streets and the same neat property boundaries.

The lease of that smaller shop will not normally adjust itself to the lost route. Unless its terms provide otherwise, the contractual rent remains payable. Many leases also have upward-only rent reviews, so weaker trading does not automatically produce a lower rent at review. A renewal or negotiated concession may offer scope for change, depending on the circumstances. Meanwhile, wages, electricity and deliveries still have to be paid from the sales that actually come through the door.

Nor is the empty store necessarily free of a tenant's obligations. Closure and the end of a lease are different events. Where a lease continues, rent and relevant repair covenants may continue too, although insolvency can complicate the position considerably. Where the building has been handed back, the owner has its own costs and decisions. None of these arrangements necessarily gives anyone a reason to keep a useful pedestrian connection open. Compliance can leave a building secure and a street considerably less convenient.

A route is not just an unlocked door

My first instinct is to ask whether a passage could remain open through the building. Then the practical questions arrive. Who separates it from the vacant floors? Who pays for lighting, cleaning, security and insurance? Can it be made accessible, with suitable escape arrangements? Are there changes of level or escalators where a straightforward route ought to be? A department store was designed to trade as a managed interior, not necessarily to contain an unattended public passage.

Those questions do not make the idea foolish. They make it a proposal that needs drawings, permissions and a budget, rather than a hopeful sentence in a regeneration document. If space is let in smaller parts, retained routes and common areas also need clear management arrangements. Recoverable service costs depend on the leases and their terms. Loading every shared expense onto the first few occupiers can make modest units uneconomic before they have established a customer base.

I would not preserve every old shopping route at any cost. Some were awkward, and some streets may work better without people disappearing indoors. But I would want to understand the journeys before deciding what happens to the shell. On a plan, reopening a side entrance can look minor beside finding a use for several floors. For the trader two doors beyond it, that entrance may matter more than the eventual name above the main doors.