Creating a commercial area

Okay, well due to unforseen group political rubbish I had to move my shop from where it was (a fairly high traffic area) to somewhere else. Now despite finding one or two potential roadside spots that looked like a good option, I decided to go for a quiet residential area with a ton of free land around about it

Anyway, my shop still isn't open yet, but I decided I'd change the layout a bit, instead of plonking it onto flat land and leaving it at that, I have left the land as it was and created a wooden platform/decking style construct in front of it. Now, the decking is dead simple, doesn't use many prims, but creates quite a nice area in front of my shop.
So I got thinking "hey, if I can get other shops to open in the adjacent land, I could help them build platforms joining onto mine (by help I mean I'd be more than happy to do all the work on the decking if meant a nice shopping area).

So I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas on where/how I'd go about finding people who are seeking a place for their shop and want fairly affordable land in a speedy sim? I mean it's a nice area, and as I say, the aim is to take a non-commercial area and turn it into a hub for a shop, speaking of hubs, it's not far from a telehub either, maybe one sim or so.

I've attached an image, as you can see the decking is fairly plain (though it has reasonable space for extras, plus my shop is quite large so a smaller shop would have more decking area to show off items, or add decorative objects. I'd of course remove the railings (more prims for me to use!!) and I think it could make quite an attractive little area to buy things, especially if the design of the deck is kept consistent and the other architecture fits into it to a reasonable degree (no run-of-the-mill vomit inducing shops, buildings with SOME actualy thought and/or care put into them!).

So any ideas? I figured here might be a good place anyway, maybe someone looking for just such a place will see this and want to check it out.

I'm in Webworm 43,92. A mature sim. I'm the five storey marble tower, you can't miss it!

The key to any succesful commercial area is accessibility; make your storefronts easy to get in and out of, and display your products efficiently and clearly.

Aside from that, just advertise. Although, be forewarned, people are starting to get "mall apathy", and are getting antsy towards Yet Another Mall Complex.

Make the architecture interesting, cohesive, and well-presented, though, and you might have an attractive commercial enterprise.

LF

Oh, I'm definitely hoping to steer clear of mall syndrome, there's nothing I hate more than a massive thing crammed full of inefficient vendors and such. Trying to put everything in one place just doesn't seem to work well, the SkyMall in Furnation (I think it's in Furnation, it does take a while to get to) is a bad example of this, some great stuff but it takes a horribly long time for me to load =(

My building as you see in the picture is quite large (five floors) but only two of them are the shop, this is to more easily seperate PG and Mature content into two different floors (PG users don't need to see the adult stuff on their way in, and mature users shouldn't be too offended by having to go upstairs, in theory at least!). The other three are my house (well one is an intermediary floor to block chat from downstairs, but I put stuff in there anyway).

Somone actually bought the land in front of mine literally 10 minutes after I posted this topic, he seems to be wanting to use prefab houses which could be bad (as the only one he got working is ugly). If I have to build him a better one for free then I will damnit, I want to try and make a nice area =)

Oh such optimism - build someone else a nicer house to prevent them erecting rubbish and ruining the area ? If only !

And what did Burns say about "as other see us"? The other residents may well be grinding their teeth about Haravikk's lovely plan to hugely commercialise their own previously "nice area".

I'm not criticising, just enjoying the view. How we always see those even a tiny bit less "sensitive" than us as untutored boors, and those a tiny bit more "sensitive" as hypochondriacs, spoilsports, or stick-in-the-muds.

The wonderful thing is. Wherever you are yourself in such a "scale", your perception of those above and below is remarkably similar.

Nothing personal, Haravikk. Just a couple of your remarks got me musing on life.

Mmmmm... I may have stumbled onto modest commercial luck out of sheer chance. Which might work for you too: just a very, very straightforward description in 'Find Places'.


That worked, even with PG land, PG products, no bling, no sex, no gambling, no games, no wild animations.

In fact the whole place might be easily mistaken for a residential estate, save for two *tiny* signs only visible once you arrive and an inscription stating that it's an "open house" and I don't 'live' there.

I advertise a little, but the big 'move' was to put the land in 'Find Places' for $L 30 a week.

Perhaps it's modest income by other folks' standards; I'm not rich by any stretch but I'm easily covering tier and a bit more.

Azure Islands has both commercial and residential islands. Contact Nexus Nash for info.

I get what you mean, but it's not quite what I'm intending.
It's just that I find a disgusting number of pre-fab houses to be very...well, crap, to use the technical terminology. A few of the Linden ones are quite nice looking, but not quite as efficient as they could be. The land-owner doesn't want to build the things himself, which is fine, I understand that as it can be time-consuming. But the budget pre-fab offerings really are cheap looking, when they don't have to be.
In-fact, one of the things my shop will be selling is pre-fab homes, and I've got pretty good at making them, and making them well. I mean really a small home designed for a rectangular 512m plot (since most of them aren't square, which would have been better since my shop would have fit perfectly into one!) doesn't need more than 20 prims, you could get away with 12 for a simple box and use textures to add flare to it. I find a lot of homes waste a ton of them on individual steps for a flight of stairs or something.

It would just be nice to work with the surrounding land-owners to make a nice area for everyone.

Thing is, H, most people here want to express their individuality, as doubless you do too. And their idea of "nice" is likely not the same as yours. One man's meat is another man's poison. In my experience this is more true, visually, in SL than anywhere else I've seen.

Which is why I'm hoping to work with them rather than against?