Initiative to Smarten up Shop Fronts & Attract New Businesses to Town Centre

An initiative to smarten up vacant properties in Wrexham Town Centre is under way, with plans to contact landlords and use more ‘imaginative’ ways of making the properties more appealing.

The idea to comes as a result of the ongoing work by local volunteers and members of Wrexham’s Town Centre Forum to help improve the appearance of the town and help encourage new tenants into the vacant properties.

At present part of the initiative involves contacting landlords of vacant properties in Wrexham Town Centre and requesting that they look into tidying their premises up.

Those walking through Wrexham lately may have noticed work taking place on the former Thomas Cook Store on Regent Street, with scaffolding outside the building. The store has remained vacant for a number of years and is currently being smartened up by the landlords to help make the site more appealing.

Along with cleaning up of town centre properties another method tidying up the appearance of empty stores has been to display art work in the windows. One such example is in the former Burton’s store on the corner of High Street, which has seen the windows decorated in a ‘reimagined version’ of Wrexham.

The Reimagine Wrexham is a concept by local art group, THIS Project and saw local artist Mikey Jones create a large canvas featuring some of Wrexham’s most iconic landmarks – including Waterworld and the town centre police tower.

Reimagine Wrexham featured as part of Wrexfest and saw visitors and shoppers in the town redesign Wrexham’s landscape with a host of bright colours, cartoons and sketches.

Speaking at this month’s Town Centre Forum Meeting, Chairman Nigel Lewis said: “We have started to make contact with landlords to tidy their premises up. I contacted the agent of Thomas Cook who said it will get the shop tidied up. It’s taken four months but there is a full scaffold on there. They are redoing the whole shop and it will look really nice and tidy. We are hoping more will get in the spirit of tidying their shops and make us of them.

“There is nice art work on the former Burton’s store, it’s a nice display called ‘Reimagne Wrexham.”

It is hoped that one of the next properties that will be renovated and tidied up will be the former Clinton’s store on Regent Street, which has remained vacant for several years.