News : City centre of Liège

Listed last April, the Liège City Centre cluster is the subject of this first Codata Factsheet covering Belgium.

The city centre consists of 1 172 locations, of which 833 are shops.

In addition to the Shopping Street Site, there are three Shopping centres : Galeries Saint-Lambert (36 locations), Ilot Shopping (26 locations) and Passage Lemonnier (30 locations).

Evolution of the vacancy rate

In 2021, the vacancy rate rose to 21.9%. This is a further increase in the steady rise in the vacancy rate that started in 2018.

In comparison, the previous vacancy rate was 18.6% while the national average vacancy rate (calculated on all Belgian city centres) was 14.4% in 2020.

However, there has been a decrease in the vacancy rate of Ilot Shopping (2021 : 22.7% – 2020 : 37.5%) and Passage Lemonnier (2021 : 26.7% – 2020 : 30%).

Retailers distribution

Among the 833 shops, 189 are occupied by Retailers ; it represents a 22.7% occupancy rate. Comparing to the 25.9% rate registered in May 2020, the Retailers’ occupancy has decreased in the city centre.

The Shopping centres Galeries Saint-Lambert and Ilot Shopping are favoured by Retailers as they represent 76.9% and 64.7% of the tenants respectively.

As far as the openings between the last two field censuses are concerned, only 6 of them were made by Retailers.

French Retailer Cultura is one of the newcomers with the opening of its first store in Belgium (situated in Ilot Shopping, opened in September 2020).