Henblas Street
-
Posts
-
So…Henblas Street is practically empty…With most of the shops that have been there, gone into administration etc.
Oh dear….Maybe an extended Arts Center ???? Then the old T J Hughes could be part of it, so opening up the walkway into the Peoples Market/Arts Center…..!!!!
Then the council could spend even MORE money on Art…!!!
People will come from all corners of the land to visit the Wrexham Arts Centers….
Hahaha….ONLY KIDDING….!!!!If anyone from Wrexham Council is reading, I would suggest turning this area into something like the Brewery Quarter in Cardiff:
http://www.breweryquarter.co.uk/
Restaurants, more upmarket bars with lots of outside space and a cool atmosphere.
Nen– nice idea but the Breweryquarter was not a Council project it was completed with private investment.
We cant blame the demise of Henblas Street on the Council but on changing consumer habits and big investment companies that number crunch profitability per sq metre and Wrexham just does not stack up for them. The Brewery Quarter is situated very close to the Millennium Centre with many thousands of visitors a year passing through — something I cant see the new Arts Hub achieving..Part agree with your comments Dylan and the Council is not of necessity the villain in this story, certainly not in recent times.
On the “changing consumer habits” you are correct if you mean that the Internet has provoked a challenge for bricks and mortar shops but plenty of towns have either adapted by a range of responses or even because fresh businesses have opened on their streets. These may be Restaurants and Galleries but there are plenty of other businesses including Creches that have sprung up across the country. Many of them will have an Arts or Crafts basis, many will be Sole traders and distinctly individual and many will be local.
This is where I suspect that we will part ways on the argument. It is not Wrexham per se that does not stack up for Investors but parts of Wrexham. It is easy to calculate why some areas continue to “thrive” or enjoy relatively full occupation and others that do not. Marks have a business template, for example, that requires a Car Park and this was not available on the Regent Street/Hope Street/Queen street area; when Eagles Meadow popped up with the prospect of Debenhams on site, a move was a shoe-in for Marks. Once the big name shops began the exodus to Eagles Meadow it was inevitable that others would follow unless two other factors came into play. The first was that the Welsh Assembly re-rated those parts of the traditional town centre, Henblas Street included, that were now becoming denuded of multiples as the town centre spread and included EM. Secondly, Wrexham Council did have it within its ability to look at Car Parking strategically and recognise that the town centre needed cheap and available parking to compete with the out of town competition. Personally, I like Rob Clarke’s suggestion concerning the revisiting of street parking and I suspect that a temporary Car Park in the Hippodrome bomb-site might have been useful. Market Street and the Peoples Market Car Parks are the most strategically useful Car Parks for this locale and a subtle use of free parking and short stay/long stay flexibility may have helped. At this stage, I still take the view that if the Rates, which are still based upon the 2008 figures, are reduced to an appropriate figure that businesses will look again at Henblas Street……especially if the Landlords reconfigure the units to a different size scale
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
