Are you still in Croydon Peter?

I was going through our local rags' website over lunch and found this link to an article that's drawing comparison between Croydon and Bradford, using us up north as a kind of weathervane for how things may go in Croydon pending the shopping centre build.

Let me know if you you guys down there need any pointers. Things like having penalty clauses for delays added into the contracts and a non-inept council will help. :)


 

"a non-inept council"

Can we have one here please? :-&

 :-S

Still, and now, and perhaps forever more.

We denziens are fortunate that Westfield is just one part of a SuperMegaMASTERPLAN!1¬ect™ that will turn the Valley of Crocuses into the next Barcelona or Los Angeles or Milan.

I was intrigued for a moment until a short way through a cursory reading reveals the author of that piece hasn't done the slightest bit of research - he tries to compare Bradford's high street to Croydon's North End, apparently blind to the fact that North End is the main/only shopping street, flanked by the two centres which Westfield will be replacing and connecting.

And yet I just realised this isn't a Bradford-based article, but apparently written by some local bloke. I'm fairly sure "Still Croydon’s only independent news source" is bollocks (there's at least a couple of other independent news blog type things I'm aware of), but I'm totally baffled by how he can write what he has.

Still, he's probably right about the reputation risk. After all, if Westfield screw up as badly here it'll really damage Croydon's sterling ...ah, yeah... think he'll find that pretty untouchable. :T

Good luck with that. I personally look forward to shopping in your metropolis. You could become the public face for the whole thing. Get me the developer's address and I'll put in a recommendation.

Perhaps the biggest concern is what happens when the centre's built and businesses from the high street move into it.

That's what happened with Bradford, we have had one high street, a few lesser ones crossing it, with others branching off hosting the crappy phone shops, jewellers, bingo halls and betting shops.

The dynamic's more complex than this, but when The Broadway was finished a lot of the existing shops had already signed up as tenants, vacated their shops on the high street, leaving a vacuous wake behind them. The council seem to have been slow on the uptake that this might be bad, coming out with a statement in the last few days saying: Right. Good. However, it's not been far off a year that Broadway's been open and people knew which businesses were moving, so were aware of what buildings would become vacant sometime before that. If it's not generated interest in that time, it doesn't bode well.

There's also a grant and rate rebate scheme that the council are offering businesses (and this also applies to the ones in Broadway - feck knows what'll happen when that runs out...), but only 6 businesses have come forward in the last year to take advantage. One wasn't positive about their experience:
  That seems to sum up the thinking of most people if you go by the comments section on the news story.

 

Paraphrased as "The shops moved! WAAH WAAH WAAH!"

Highstreets are dying all over. A new mall might be a kick in the ribs, but it's not the root.

Hmm, you're right, but for Bradford at least, we're constantly compared to Leeds and they're seemingly doing alright, providing a more attractive city centre alternative and only being 15 minutes away on the train. I know we're not a special case and this sort o' thing is happening all over, but it's all the more prevalent when it's your own back yard.

It's not just about shops moving, it's about shops closing and not being replaced. There are streets here that have more 'to let' signs than businesses.

It's not all about retail though, Bradford's brand (if that's even a thing) has a certain toxicity. We're seen as an area of social deprivation, famous for riots, being an immigration hub, holes in the ground and Tasmin Archer. They're remembered over the laudable things we do have and that should be promoted more. We seem to have trouble attracting business (the Broadway notwithstanding). There are a ton of empty offices here, and probably the most prominent example is an area right in the city centre next to city hall that's been given planning permission for 3 high rise office blocks, but instead of any building work getting under way, the site's been grassed over and made into a temporary green space. The cynic in me says they've not been able to secure any interested tenants to warrant building anything.

Bury underwent a sizeable regeneration only a few years ago. It already had a fair amount done when I was younger with one shopping centre opening. With the recent work many of the shops from the existing part moved to the new bit. It is really nice, but it left the existing centre with lots of empty shops. As time has gone on and rents have creeped up some shops have moved back to the original area.

It's all well and good regenerating an area for shops, but adding more retail space when there's not enough businesses to fill it makes things a bit of a waste.

Were the rent increases something the business knew about before signing up?
 

Yep. We've got lots of brownfield sites/buildings going to waste, and the council seem hell bent on creating newer sites and building hotels in a bid to attract more business. That's fair enough, but I suspect part of the unattractiveness of our city centre is due to having lots of unoccupied sites. :C

> We're seen as an area of social deprivation, famous for riots, being an immigration hub, holes in the ground

Yep, yep, yep, yep.

> ...and Tasmin Archer

Dunno who that is, so I'll let you pick your own...

Get the council to commission local artists to fill the unoccupied sites with their artwork.

Makes the place look less of a shithole, whilst providing a display area for artists who might be unable/unwilling to go in a traditional gallery/etc.

Ta da...

Anyone remember Kate? I think she was part of the randomain forum.

Kate?

Aye, she's in the article in the link. She was friends with Mouse on the other forum and in real life.

Ah, now I see her - the site is made by incompetent twerps and doesn't show that gallery at the top without third party JavaScript, which I (like any sensible person) have blocked by default.

Looks vaguely familiar but I don't think I knew her.

Was randomain different to state?

It certainly is made by incompentents, and journalists whose grasp of the English language is dubious.

State?

I think the randomain was a precursor to this place, with people like Kate, Mouse and Mazz0 contributing.

Nope, priors to Teh were NPCFF, BigBeigeBox and Restrooms. Might have been another, but randomain was a different thing.

I think state was a PCG spinoff, and I thought that was where you and Mouse and others came from.

Ah - I knew some of you came from the PCF forums, but didn't know about the others.

I somehow stumbled on the randomain way back when and met Mouse and Kate once or twice. He gave me a free music goodie bag. :)

 

Yeah, just found msg:39688.28 where Mouse says: "Bloody hell aye, we had an on-line magazine called Random Magazine that used a Beehive forum. But wasn't very good."

Can't find any mentions of State anywhere though. :/ It definitely existed, but I don't remember if it was the Delphi era or Beehive.

State was nothing to do with the people you mention, as far as I know. I think it was on Delphi, possibly? It definitely ended up on Beehive. Oskar Skog started it up and it went on to provide what seemed like half of Future Publishing's next generation of videogames writers. And you're right that it was a PCG spinoff, of sorts. Also I suppose somewhat related to that other forum a lot of the cheeky PCG whippersnappers started up. What was that called? Wee Dave defected from here to it, pretty much.