A Jules store, a Crédit Agricole branch, a bistro, a Pimkie, a Promod… Looking at the windows, Place Jeanne-Hachette in Beauvais (Oise) looks like many others, recognizes Charles Locquet, deputy mayor in charge of Action in the heart of town. “You have here the classic linear of a French city center. “Signs known to all, but in great difficulty.
Pimkie, sold in early February, will close dozens of stores. Jules, narrowly saved a few years ago, is still fragile. A little further, the Galeries Lafayette, franchised to the group of Michel Ohayon, are in the safeguard procedure. On the other side of the square, right next to the town hall, the Burton of London brand is under threat, and suddenly closed around sixty stores at the end of February. Further up the street, Camaïeu has already closed its doors, at the end of 2022. The location is still empty.
“It’s worrying, because if all of them disappeared suddenly, it would be complicated to fill all these commercial cells”, worries the chosen one. A new unwelcome difficulty for already shaken city centers. The commercial vacancy rate, 7.2% on average in 2012, reached 11.9% in 2018, according to the barometer of Procos, the representative federation of specialized trade. The evolution is even more marked in small and medium-sized towns, where it is 1.5 times faster. And again, that was before the Covid-19 pandemic.
Businesses are suffering. They had a hard time coping with competition from the Internet and the upheaval in consumer habits. From the Covid attacks, and now inflation, they suffer crisis after crisis. “When you have 10% on food, pleasure purchases drop, it’s inevitable”, analyzes Aurélien Tert, founder of unLocation.com, a platform specializing in business fixed assets. “At the same time, costs are rising: the scissor effect is daunting. »
There is no question of watching them disappear – and the city centers with them – while remaining idly by. Municipalities are doubling their inventiveness to try to stem the dynamic: financial incentives, urban redevelopment, hiring city center managers to advise businesses on best practices… Son of merchants, Charles Locquet admits: “The market does not no longer regulates on its own, you have to be hyper-proactive. »
In Beauvais, which benefits from the national “Action Coeur de Ville” financing plan, the town hall connects project leaders, donors and banks, and plays the role of facilitator. As with this test shop, rented by the town hall at an advantageous rent for those who would like to gauge the opportunity of setting up before committing. Add to that a touch of coercion – a tax on premises left vacant for too long – and the efforts pay off: in the Oise prefecture, very few shop windows are empty. “The commercial vacancy is under 10%”, assures the elected official.
Municipalities don’t work miracles either. They have no leeway to prevent the disappearance of these struggling national brands. “For Galeries Lafayette, it would be unfair, because ours, in Beauvais, are profitable, it’s the franchisee’s group that is doing badly…” A few action levers remain: rather than a dry closure of the Burton store, the town hall pushes for an assignment, which would allow a recovery of employees. And when Camaïeu closed, all the sales assistants were supported in their job search.
“A real political will makes things change,” agrees Pierre Creuzet, president of the Centre-ville en mouvement association. But be careful not to focus only on businesses. “The city center is not everything: you need people who live there to consume there, entertainment to attract neighbors, a mobility plan…” Beauvais plans to renovate its pedestrian streets, build 200 new housing units in the city centre, offers regular entertainment and has made parking free.
In some municipalities, however, the revitalization of the city center turns to therapeutic relentlessness, considers Aurélien Tert. “If you don’t have the economic fabric with the disposable income to consume, it won’t work. For the entrepreneur, the market, in full mutation, will naturally rebalance itself. “There, we sometimes try to hold on to things that will eventually disappear. Some still believe in it and do not hesitate to launch their business despite the ambient slump. “We see independent concepts being created,” says Charles Locquet. They have all the codes of today, are dynamic, participate in events… For them, it works! »
But without the big names as locomotives, will customers still come to stroll through the city centers? Elected as traders count on the act of citizens, who will prefer to support their neighbors than to buy on the Internet. “We facilitate, but, in the end, it is not the municipality that consumes”, underlines the Beauvaisian deputy. Pierre Creuzet is convinced: “City centers have a future! As proof of this, these signs accustomed to shopping centers or peripheral commercial areas, such as Primark or Ikea, which are beginning to invest in the hearts of the city. It is still necessary that the average municipalities manage to bring them in…
