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“Asda will boost area” – Cllr. John Anglin

South Shields town centre is in crisis, as I walked from the Market Place down King Street on Saturday it was very evident. Firstly there wasn’t even half a market, traders are now staying away from South Shields in larger numbers on the days when we expect them to be busiest. The number of stalls that were occupied could easily have sheltered under the Old Town Hall.

In King Street nine retail premises were empty and two other leases up for sale, as well as Adams, the childrens’ clothes retailer, preparing to close. Neither retailers nor customers want to be part of a dead or decaying culture, just take a look at what happened to Frederick Street over the past thirty years.

Deputy Mayor, Cllr. John Anglin is now offering a little more than his usual platitudes about how sad the situation is, and reflecting my view that ambitious ‘out of the box’ thinking was needed he had this to say to the Shields Gazette:

“What we need to do is to really think about what we can do to help those shops that do remain in business throughout the year.

“Whether that is helping them with parking at the weekends or seeing if something can be done about rent or rates, I really don’t know.”

Coun Anglin said the new Asda store in Coronation Street will boost the area and bring new jobs, but added the future use of the site it will vacate in Ocean Road is critical.

I am hoping that Cllr. Anglin’s words signal a shifting of thought in the local Labour Party and amogst officers of South Tyneside Council, we badly need a change of direction.
The customer flow is about to move to the area of our town centre where we have the most empty premises, the top end of King Street and the Market Place will become key to any revival of customer interest in the long term sustainability of our town centre. People will gravitate between the Asda site, Waterloo Square, and the Market Place. In the short to medium term we need to offer more than free weekend car parking, we need a fully signed up partnership between retailers and council to offer two hours free parking on any day of the week, so long as the driver is spending money in South Shields. This is easy to achieve, the parking ticket is delivered in two parts, part two is handed to the retailer when spending more than five pounds, and the parking fee is refunded. The retailers return the refunded tickets to the council on a monthly basis and the council reimburses the retailer.

In short, this gives shoppers two hours free parking, guarantees customers for the retailers, keeps trade in South Shields, and makes South Shields more attractive for prospective new retailers. The more retailers who sign up to the scheme, the better for all.

The Market needs a radical repricing strategy, stallholders could be encouraged to make block bookings weeks in advance with the attraction of scalable discounts, i.e. the more spaces you book, the cheaper the rate. Imaginative short term schemes such as Victorian dress at Christmas time and competitions for stall holders need to be explored.

The link between the new Asda site and the old needs to be maintained, there is a real danger that Ocean Road will lose any retail significance at all, (in the same fashion as Fowler Street), one might even be in a position to interest a developer into creating three or four retail units from the building and creating windows facing the car park.

In the longer term, the economic survival and vibrance of South Shields town centre may depend upon a wholesale redevelopment of the commercial area including the Market Place, King Street, Queen Street, Kepple Street, Barrington Street, part of Fowler Street, Waterloo Square, and the Denmark Centre and Central Library. A highly ambitious and ultra imaginative plan needs to be sought to upgrade the area to a fully enclosed shopping and commercial centre, serviced from below ground level, with free car parking above. It may take massive efforts to secure European funding and many legal obstacle may have to be overcome to purchase and demolish properties but I believe it would be possible to provide the type of shopping facilities that would be envied, and to give an experience which includes the preservation of the Old Town Hall and market square under a modern glass atrium, a  state of the art library and information centre, an enlarged museum, and shopping under cover in wide open malls such as those enjoyed in The Bridges at Sunderland, and the Metro Centre in Gateshead.

They managed to do it in Sunderland!

It may be radical, but town centres do evolve, and if we continue to fail to offer what shoppers want, we could end up looking like a ghost town.

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