Friday, April 4, 2014
What's the Plan B for Tonbridge Town Centre?....
Lots in the Courier today about the Sainsbury's bombshell dropped earlier in the week as they pulled out of the, so called, "Sainsbridge" regeneration store, leisure centre and cinema project at the advanced stages. It was an outrage according to council officials and many townsfolk. That said the reports also suggested that the views of quite a few shoppers, businesses and passers by up and down the town weren't all that in favour of the development to start with. Some seemed to be suggesting that the project would have caused years of disruption and much loss of trade as a result and that the high street might well stand to benefit from the shift in focus away from the Angel area. Either way the borough council has the headache now of finding a Plan B, and pretty damned sharpish....
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4 comments:
Personally, I find shopping in the Sainsbury's we have now a daunting and depressing experience. Do we really need any more aisles of ready meals and oven chips? Even if the new one had brought more shoppers to Tonbridge, most of them would probably stay only for their hour of free parking and depart without visiting the rest of the town. I can't see that we need a new leisure centre either - there's nothing wrong with the Angel Centre that a lick of paint and a bit of maintenance wouldn't put right. And the Medway Hall would be greatly missed by all the organisations that use it - NADFAS & the U3A to name but two.
Towns like Lewes offer a good range of independent shops, including some excellent off-beat outlets. So does Canterbury, which manages to combine big name outlets with some slightly quirky, but interesting small shops. Even nearby Sevenoaks has a far wider range of independent shops than we have here in Tonbridge.
How to attract shops, such as these, to our town is the $64,000 question, but TMBC needs to look closely at the success of other towns and learn from them, rather than go whoring after retail giants, such as Sainsbury’s. Tonbridge has attractions like the River, the Castle and the sports ground, and should capitalise on them. There are far too many charity shops, hairdressers and estate agents in the town, and even though the latter are indicative that Tonbridge is a desirable place to live, we need our town to be much more than a dormitory for those who commute to London each day.
Other commentators have mentioned the welcome addition of Finch House Café and Chatfields Butchers to the High Street, but we need far more of these pillars of excellence to put Tonbridge on the map and make it a real destination town for shoppers. I don’t know what TMBC offer in the way of incentives, such as rate reductions, to attract small businesses to the town; if they offer anything at all. If they do, they ought to publicise them more; if they don’t, then they ought to hang their heads in shame.
Tonbridge has and always will be a victim of it's proximity to London and Tunbridge Wells. It is never going to be a shopping destination in it's own right, less so since Blue Water opened 15 years ago and with the expansion of Knights Park.
Not only this but consider how many office blocks lay empty or have made way for housing. That's quite a lot of footfall taken away from the high street- people that have money to spend at lunch or after work.
The council could start by offering free parking for the first 4 hours - long enough to encourage shoppers but not enough to be abused by commuters.
It's a nice enough place to live with excellent transport links, good schools and leisure facilities but will never be a shopping destination.
The town centre office blocks are being replaced by apartments with just as many if not more residents than there were office workers so the number of town shoppers should increase. What is different is the demand of theses extra residents on services like doctors and schools in the town centre. Many of the new blocks have limited car parking and none at all for visitors so I don't know what this will do to parking at places like the Angel centre parks.
The good news about Sainsburys pulling out is that the council leader claims that the council does have other plans and are talking to other unnamed parties.
I am sure Morrisons must be among them since there already own a prime site.
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