In 1968, Irish Times columnist John Healy published a book called No One Shouted Stop: The Death of an Irish Town.
While the fortunes of Charlestown, the town in question, have waxed and waned in the years since, there is no doubt that the onset of recession and the shakeout that followed have hit the Charlestowns of Ireland extremely hard.
What is now needed is a co-ordinated effort by all interests in and around these towns to support their rejuvenation.
Rather than focusing on the administrative structure of these towns, from a Retail Excellence Ireland (REI) perspective it is more important to focus on attracting new investors, delivering an appropriate retail mix and crucially on “reselling” the merits of these towns to their respective hinterlands.
The application of a range of simple shopping centre management principles could help to markedly improve the future outlook of our towns and villages.
We all rely on a functioning, vibrant and engaging civic focal point. This reflects our broader sense of place, our values and where we are from. However in addition to the impacts of recession and the structural shift to online purchasing, our towns have witnessed a local government system overly fixated on revenue from development, the construction of ever bigger shopping centres, which mostly need to accessed by car and the application and rigorous enforcement of parking charges in town centres.
Town centres are often challenged in that they are less accessible than out-of-town shopping centres, have a diverse landlord base with sometimes differing agendas, and are not proactively managed.
To respond to these developments, towns and villages need to form town centre partnerships involving public, private, voluntary and community sectors.
Local authorities are also critical to the development of these teams.
Town centre teams must focus on:
1. Retail and hospitality investment – filling empty space with uses which citizens will engage with.
2. Citizen engagement.
3. Standards and security – ensuring public spaces are clean and safe.
4. Measuring performance through street audits, footfall levels, local spend, vacancy levels, etc.
These partnerships must concentrate on the needs of the town centre and devise a succinct and measurable plan for it.
To enable implementation of agreed actions, such partnerships require funding, which is where government and especially local authorities can play a role.
Government should support local authorities in the provision of rent- and rates-controlled zones in urban environments.
These zones can provide an opportunity for SME-owned and -operated stores to open, and for towns to deliver a unique retail mix to consumers. The English Market in Cork is a prime example of how such a model can provide a rich, broad retail experience.
Government also needs to support the training of a new cadre of town centre managers focused on bringing about the agreed town centre vision; and the larger local authorities should be mandated to fund the appointment or the secondment of a dedicated full-time town centre manager.
Local authorities must be enabled to grant rates waivers or reductions to attract new businesses that broaden the retail mix.
Budget 2015 can also play a role in putting more cash into consumers’ pockets and reducing payroll taxes such as employers’ PRSI, thereby opening up the prospect of better trading and employment conditions in the domestic economy.
Finally, the pressure that local authority rates cause on retailers needs to be recognised and responded to.
If we can harness the potential of our towns, and adopt policies that focus on filling and supporting our empty retail sites with diverse retail and recreational businesses, then we can look forward to a brighter future for our towns.
If we do not, then we will miss an opportunity to stop a drift toward irrelevance that will lead to the death of too many Irish towns.
Seán Murphy is deputy CEO of Retail Excellence Ireland. REI’s Strategy for Rural Retailing is available at www.retailexcellence.ie