Comment: How to use extra space in Tesco stores and is it worth it?

Fancy a kick around in the park. Got a ball? Got some boots? Shorts? Top? No? Well why not take a trip to Tesco and pick up all you need from Sports Direct? That, or a version of it, is what is understood to be what lies in store for shoppers visiting larger Tesco stores, where there is space to spare and where the powers that be are wondering what can be done with the surplus.

And on the face of it, why not? The question is the same under one roof as that which faces high streets across the land. What do you do with space that no longer seems to chime with the times in terms of shopper demand? The response on many high streets has been to put up the ‘to let’ signs and board over the windows.

All well and good, but this hardly equates to an attractive vista - one that will entice shoppers to part with their cash or even to spend time in a particular location. In fairness to Tesco, which had its AGM on Friday, it has been on a voyage of “rediscovery”, according to chairman Sir Richard Broadbent, in the manner in which it conducts its in-store UK business.

It had “almost let slip the single-minded focus on customers” that marked it out, according to Broadbent, and the result was decline. Whether that single-mindedness means that shoppers need yet more Sports Direct outlets is clearly a moot point, but there is much to suggest that it is better to have something in a store, or on a high street for that matter, than nothing .

A visit to the Tesco Extra stores in Sunderland and Gateshead last week was instructive in showing that everything from a phone shop to a sunglass emporium can have its place in the watery North Eastern sun that shines on Tesco and that the stores look the better for it. Hard to know the nature of the deal that may be struck with Sports Direct, but at least Tesco is mindful of the debilitating effect of empty or unused space.

Being creative about the manner in which space is used and seeing surplus square footage as something that needs to be met head on is rational. Better by far than hoping that things will somehow come good and that tenants will appear who are prepared to pay more: they almost certainly will not. Sadly, landlords in some of our more benighted locations fail to recognise this.