RetailLeon Della BoscaTue 14 Jul 26
We Risk Losing What Makes Precincts Worth Visiting: Angela Bonnefin
“From a cold shell fit-out, you don’t get any change from $250,000 for a small cafe... and people are spending $2 to $3 million on a large restaurant. Those are numbers independent operators laugh at. For them it simply can’t happen.”
Retail Strategy Group founder Angela Bonnefin has watched this trend since founding the business she started after resigning from a corporate real estate role at 32 because “the culture just didn’t align with my values”.
New projects, she told The Urban Developer, are “far more expensive to be part of than a typical high-street strip” and remain unaffordable for independent operators “even at half the rent”.
National franchises and well-capitalised groups now dominate retail as a result, she said, meaning “the very places we are investing the most in are the hardest for an independent business to enter”.
Three decades into running her own consultancy, Bonnefin has helped to design mixed-use precincts with an approach tracing back to early exposure to European cities.
“The finer grain, the laneways, the piazza and town square, the enjoyment and simplicity of life, the markets and fresh food influenced the way I felt about the almost limitless possibilities we could adopt in our own thinking,” she said.
Too many developers, in her view, let leasing drive decisions from the outset, chasing whichever tenant will pay the highest rent before a proper strategy is in place.
This, Bonnefin said, is the industry’s biggest mistake.
“Data and analytics inform the strategy, experience shapes it and strategy will always drive the best design outcomes,” she said.
Only once that order is set should leasing step in. Not driving design, but curating a tenant mix that fits it.
“Leasing then holds its space by adopting a curatorial approach which creates the outcomes for place and public realm,” she said. “And it is the retail that [then] becomes the glue of placemaking.”
Bonnefin said Paris was a useful comparison, where “the cost of entry to start your own restaurant is minimal by comparison, and part of why the city is full of distinctive, owner-run places”.
Left unaddressed, Bonnefin believes, “we are going to see a significant amount of retail space in new buildings sit empty over the next decade”.
“It comes down to spaces that are not designed well or built for the operators we want in them,” she said.
“We risk losing the independent businesses who give our places, suburbs and cities their character, and they are often the whole reason a precinct is worth visiting.”
Angela Bonnefin will share her views at Urbanity-26, where she joins a panel examining the people, policies and projects behind places that attract, convert and retain human vibrancy.
