The dynamic development of housing outside the city center and the change in consumer behavior, focused on local living and shopping, open up new opportunities for tenants from the retail and service sector. As a result, the demand for premises in housing estates is constantly growing, as evidenced by, inter alia, low vacancy rate – at the level of 12%, according to Colliers experts in the report entitled “Shopping streets in Warsaw housing estates”. This means that out of 3,430 premises they have examined, approx. 440 are still vacant, with a total area of approx. 4,700 sq m. Most are of high quality, but vary in terms of space and infrastructure. When deciding to be present in housing estates, it is worth paying attention to several aspects that make the premises attractive and will attract customers.
Let yourself be seen
One of the factors determining the attractiveness of commercial premises is their visibility in the commercial route and accessibility to various groups of recipients. Research conducted by Colliers shows that as many as 99% of the analyzed premises have display windows and direct entrances from the street. These are high-quality locations, located on the ground floors of new buildings. In some investments, however, there are architectural barriers, such as stairs, platforms, arcades or small architecture, which reduce the attractiveness of retail and service spaces. The premises hidden behind them become poorly visible to potential customers and inaccessible to people who are not able to move freely. Two-story rooms, especially with basements, are also a challenge for the latter.
Premises for the industry
When choosing a premises, it is also worth taking into account the specificity of the industry in which the tenant operates. A company from the medical industry, for which the availability of daylight is important, other needs will be experienced by a catering tenant, for whom the possibility of organizing a garden in the summer season plays an important role.
Take care of parking
Insufficient number of parking spaces, lack of bays and driveways that would allow you to park a scooter, bicycle or scooter next to shops is one of the most common problems of premises located in Warsaw housing estates. Their lack makes it impossible to serve a larger number of customers, especially those from further parts of the district and even other parts of the city. So if we want to expand the impact zone, it is worth checking whether there is any free parking lot or a bay in the vicinity of the premises that allows you to temporarily leave the vehicle.
The supra-local function, and thus the attractiveness of the space, are also increased by access to public transport and extensive road infrastructure. Pedestrian traffic in Warsaw’s districts is primarily influenced by the route of tram lines, metro lines and the location of stations, and car traffic – by the functioning arteries and ring roads. The potential of the location can therefore be linked to the number of potential customers in the impact zone and its neighborhood or district range. How to define it? Designating the time zone.
Five-minute zone
For the purposes of the analysis, in the Colliers report, we assumed that a 5-minute walk is acceptable to customers on foot to make quick purchases. The results showed that the number of residents who can walk from their place of residence to a commercial and service premises during this time ranges from 1,600 to 8,000 and depends primarily on the density of buildings, both the new and the old one that borders with a shopping street. In addition, the number of residents in the five-minute zone, depending on the size and specificity of the estate, accounts for 12% to 43% of all its inhabitants and depends on the part of the estate marked out by new buildings and how this street and its buildings integrate with the rest residential buildings in the estate.
However, this aspect should be considered individually, because the premises in residential streets are closely related to the places where they were built, their density of buildings and the degree of integration with the urban fabric.
Can an attractive premises be designed at the planning stage?
You can and you must! It is important that at the stage of designing commercial partnerships in residential buildings, developers plan in advance what services or industries are needed in their project. On the one hand, this enables the technical adaptation of the surface modules to future functions and compliance with the relevant legal regulations in this context. For example, ventilation ducts are designed differently for the premises where the restaurant will be located, and differently for hairdressing services. Poorly designed service premises exclude the presence of potential tenants in the future, as with oils can translate into the attractiveness of the entire shopping street.
And here we come to another aspect related to the planning of commercial premises – the diversification of tenants. Diversification of the offer of shops and service points already at the planning stage, the so-called The “tenant mix” will not create any risk related to increasing competitiveness for local businesses in the future. In this context, it is also important to maintain a “healthy” proportion between chain stores and individual concepts. The former attract customers with a well-known logo, while individual concepts create the “atmosphere of the place”, activate and integrate the community, which is necessary for the functioning of the local high street and building the attractiveness of the premises themselves.
Author: Karol Milczarski, Senior Associate in the Retail Agency at Colliers
