Things are looking up for Aberdeen’s shopping centres, as vacancy rates continue to drop.
New businesses continue to open across the city’s four shopping centres, which has seen significant improvements to come centres since we launched our tracker.
We’ve been tracking some of Aberdeen’s high streets for over a year, and this is the fifth time we’ve gotten out on the streets to do a full check on how things are doing.
This includes walking all of the 11 high streets we now track, as well as the four shopping centres.
Since our last census:
- Average vacancy rates have dropped for the city centre, including those in the shopping centres
- We’ve added more units to our tracker to cover more of the West End
- A third of the units we track are now food and drink businesses
Vacancy rates continue to fall in centres
Meanwhile in the shopping centres, there’s been definite improvements in vacancy rates since the last full census.
Across all centres, there’s an average vacancy rate of 13.4% – down from 16.4% at the last census.
When we launched the tracker in June 2023, there was an average vacancy rate of 20.1% in the centres. Six months ago, in May 2024, there was a vacancy rate of 15.3%, which shows strong efforts have been made by centre staff to attract new businesses into filling previously empty units.
Union Square remains the most occupied, and now is at its lowest vacancy rate since we began tracking – at only 4.8%, which is four out of 84 units vacant.
Plans have also been submitted for some of these vacant sites, including for chains Maki and Ramen and Wingstop.
There is also signage up on the former Chiquitos unit for Singh Street, a restaurant which will serve up “family-style dining” inspired by Punjabi street food.
‘We are doing it for our city’
When we began tracking the centres in June 2023, the Trinity Centre had the highest vacancy rate at 37.04%.
Now, in November 2024, this has dropped to 21.4%.
Centre manager Kenny Bruce said he was looking forward to exciting openings coming soon.
He said: “Over the past year we have been working to create a solid foundation for the Trinity to build on, it’s been fantastic to see the occupancy levels and offer for our customers growing.
“With the new local ownership, being local helps as we can make the key decisions here in Aberdeen, we are pushing really hard to bring new businesses not just to the centre but to our city we all love and work in, so beyond doing it as our job we are doing it for our city our lives and families, it’s really great to see such positivity in the centre.”
Tracking more of the West End
Thistle Street and Chapel Street came out the top two streets with the most independent businesses- at more than 90% and 80% respectively.
Up until this point, we’ve only tracked Chapel Street up until the hotel as much of it is residential or taken up by a car park. But, given the high percentage of independent businesses on the street, we decided it would be best to extend the coverage so all businesses are included.
To give a fuller picture of the West End’s shopping streets, we’ve also added and fully drawn out Rose Street.
Further units have also been added to Thistle Street to ensure accuracy in reporting.
We now track 26 units on Chapel Street, where six are vacant (23.1%) and 28 on Thistle Street, where two are vacant (7.1%).
Rose Street is fairly residential, but there are 22 units on the street, mainly on its Union Street side.
All of the units designated for commercial use are currently occupied, so it has a vacancy rate of 0% – and is currently the only street in Aberdeen that has no empty units.
How else have things changed?
In the past year, Schoolhill, George Street and Little Belmont Street have all seen increases in their vacancy rates.
While George Street and Schoolhill’s increases are slight, Little Belmont Street has gone from a 0% vacancy rate to a 25% vacancy rate in the past six months.
This is due to the closures of Little Belmont Hut and Tango Turtle – which is still marked as temporarily closed but has not been open in months.
Since we launched the high street tracking project in July 2023, Belmont Street is the area that has seen the most change.
Vacancy rates on Belmont Street have fluctuated, peaking at 29% in November 2023, and at its lowest in June 2024 at 20%. It currently has a 26.7% vacancy rate.
With the addition of Rose Street and more occupied units on Chapel Street and Thistle Street, as well as changes on other streets, this has brought the average vacancy rate for Aberdeen in November 2024 down to 19.5%.
It’s a small decrease since we began tracking, as in June 2023 the average vacancy rate was 20.71%. In November 2023, it was 20.6% – which shows vacancy rates have generally been trending downwards in the city.
Has the make-up of Aberdeen city centre changed at all?
Despite adding a number of new units to our tracker, food and drink still remains the most popular type of unit.
Out of 364 units we track, 123 are food and drink – 33.8%, or a third of all businesses on the high street.
Just behind at 31.3% of the high street at 114 units, is shopping.
In third place is hair and beauty with 43 units, or 11.8% of the units we track.
In November last year, shopping was the most popular unit type, with 108 retail businesses out of 335, while food and drink sat at 107. Hair and beauty had 37 units out of 335.
But it wasn’t until our February census that food and drink overtook shopping as most popular.
So while we’ve added more units, it hasn’t made much of a difference to the make-up of the high streets, other than widen the gap between food and drink and retail.
The below chart shows the shops that we’ve lost and gained from streets we track since the last census in July.
One of the most prominent closures over the past three months has been the Royal Bank of Scotland on Union Street. It was announced earlier this year the branch would be closing, but the doors didn’t officially shut until November 13.
Big changes in the shopping centres include the moving of TK Maxx. Work is in progress at the former TK Maxx unit to extend Marks and Spencers, while TK Maxx itself has relocated and taken over stores on the other side of the car park, where Home Sense and Dreams used to be.
Where can I see more?
We will continue to update places opening and closing on the above mentioned streets and shopping centres.
You can view our Aberdeen high street trackers which include the shopping streets.
And you can also view our Aberdeen shopping centres tracker.
To see more about what is happening to improve the city, we also have a page dedicated to the future of Aberdeen.Â
Can you help us keep our tracker up to date?
All of the data included within our high street tracker is collected manually by the data team and reporters in Aberdeen.
It includes units opening and closing we’ve written articles on, as well as things we’ve noticed while out on foot in the area. Our last open dates may be estimates based on the best information we could find.
But we know we might not always spot everything, or get every closure date right.
We appreciate all the support we’ve received for our trackers so far, and would love if you would like to help us keep it up to date.
If there’s anything you spot opening or closing you’d like us to know about, or if you have more accurate information on closing dates or what the last business to occupy a unit was, you can let us know using the form below.
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