Life cycle of a Town Centre

suki1001

Hello there,

I've been doing some thinking as we've had all this Mary P and her market stall stuff going on.

I was driving through my industrial northern town today and replacing our vacant bookshop (family run for 70 years), is one of those yellow "in yer face" pawn shops. I was thinking of the fads that seem to bombard the shops where we live. So in order (roughly) I have a list of how these crazes appeared:

Charity shops
Mobile phone shops
Takeaways
Foreign property shops
Poundshops
Seconds furniture shops (although mainly on the outskirts).
Now we're seeing a surge in the Pawn/cash for gold style shops.

So what next? I'm ignoring the market idea, we have a permanent indoor market that would suffer if there was another outdoor market.

I don't like these fads although they stop the shops from being vacant, but I'd be interested to know what the next one will be.

Any ideas?

paddyrg

you missed shoe shops, estate agents, and christmas shops. Things come in waves.

Kennyboy66

paddyrg wrote: »

you missed shoe shops, estate agents, and christmas shops. Things come in waves.

there was 4 shoe shops on my local high street when i was growing up. None now - sadly there is as many estate agents as ever, although a few are more rental / property managers.

Astonishingly there was also a tea room called "Thatchers" (owned I think by Tory MP Anthony Steen).

This was Liverpool in 1981 just before Militant got their stranglehold on the city.

It is of course, now an estate agent.

The Tories re having their annual conference in Liverpool next year, which probably seals the citys rehabilitation

StevieJ

Kennyboy66 wrote: »

there was 4 shoe shops on my local high street when i was growing up. None now - sadly there is as many estate agents as ever, although a few are more rental / property managers.

Astonishingly there was also a tea room called "Thatchers" (owned I think by Tory MP Anthony Steen).

Is there also a tanning studio called The Sun :eek:

Davesnave

The large market town near us used to have a livestock market and an entire street dedicated to butchers, fishmongers and veg shops, plus a pannier market with many local produce stalls. There's only a couple of butchers now and one fish shop. A few die-hards of pension age still trade in the pannier market, but they've largely been replaced by craft stalls for the tourists and cheap tat stalls.

The town used to have a couple of supermarkets on the periphery, but now Tesco have a second store nearer the centre, Asda are set to join them, Lidl have two and Morrisons have just applied to build on the one side not already covered by someone else. Some locals hail this as having "more choice," but the fact is, they lost that years ago.

Speaking as someone who goes there from outside, there isn't enough to pull me into the centre of the town every time, so I'll often just visit Sainsburys on the perimeter and escape, back to the country via another smaller market town, where parking is still 30p. That's my version of "more choice."

Out,_Vile_Jelly

My home town has always been full of charity shops, possibly because it's popular for coffin dodgers. I grew up thinking it was quite normal to buy clothes and books from second hand shops.

abaxas

County Durham is littered with towns that basically died and with it the town centre.

However rents became so cheap they are on the up, with more specialist shops and non generic retailers. The seeds of business that will grow into our futures.

Running_Horse

I remember an estate agents being refused planning in the early 80s in York, because the planners were worried the town was being taken over by EAs and restaurants.

TruckerT

The advantages of the traditional High Street are sentimental or social - economic advantages are almost non-existent

It used to be true that a shop assistant would be able to give you detailed information about the products on offer, but these days it is rare to find such expertise

There is talk of a 'transaction tax' on banking - maybe a similar tax on internet trading would also be worthy of consideration - but only if the proceeds were to be invested in providing a genuine, high quality, old-fashioned High Street level of 'service', which is not necessarily measured by its ability to offer next-day delivery of a completely inappropriate product - a no-questions-asked refund policy is a poor substitute for proper customer information

TruckerT