7:26pm Thursday 9th July 2009
By ivor
I had got my blog for this evening prepared and ready to go then I arrived home to read the story on the news section of this site saying that a survey had found that 22% of the shop fronts in the complex are empty.
Apparently a comparable survey that took place in January found only 14% of shop fronts in the wonderful High Street are empty.
Of course such news comes as no surprise to me. You probably know my views on the many failings of the complex so I will not bore you by repeating them again.
What I found worrying was the fact that the powers that be are only now coming up with ideas to rectify the problem of the empty units. What have they been doing for the past 12 months?
The plan is to relax planning restrictions and try to change the mix of businesses in the High Street. Only 50% of the High Street premises will be required to be shops with the remaining units being made up of pubs, cafes and businesses.
In my opinion this is a big mistake. You simply can’t re-engineer a town on a whim and expect things to work. After all the re-engineering of shopping in Wycombe by building the complex was a dreadful mistake and is the cause of the empty retail units that blight the town centre today.
What would our High Street be like if it was full of pubs? In this age of social responsibility is it right to build more liquor houses to add to the army of drunken yobbos who take over the town after dark?
No. We do not need more pubs of cafes.
This proposed solution is merely a cop out designed fill up the empty units at any cost and paper over the cracks created when the shopping facilities in Wycombe were expanded.
Wycombe needs to look to a town like Marlow to find inspiration to get itself round. We need traditional phone boxes and proper wooden benches in our High Street and it needs to be kept clean and looked after.
I am getting fed up with the powers that be coming up with plans for the town. I think it’s time the people had their say. Are we really paying our Council Tax for people in Queen Victoria to firstly ruin the town through over expansion then try to fix the problems they have created?
If the rejuvenation of the town centre had been planned and carried out properly the empty units would simply not have existed. The simple fact is the complex is far too big for Wycombe and the over-expansion of retail units has killed our town centre. The mix of shops we have now is not very good either.
Only the other day I needed to buy a wire descaler for my kettle. Do you know the department store doesn’t even sell them? Unbelievable!
I managed to get one very easily in the towns other shopping centre though. So far I have yet to find anything in the complex that I need. Why on earth was it built and how does it expect to make a profit?
I really fear for Wycombe. Not only has the town been ruined by over expansion of the shopping area but it has taken over a year for the powers that be to even come up with a solution to the problem.
What hope do we have?
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