Olympic Shopping Development

[rich47]

What do you think of the new shopping development in Stratford?
300 shops, 70 restaurants; surely these extra new jobs will be lost elsewhere?

[joggerjayne]

Well, as you see, I don't think too highly of it ...

http://www.theanswerb.../Question1056825.html

I'm not keen on shopping centres. We have one here, called Churchill Square. It's just a big, ugly concrete thing, stuck too close to the middle of the town.

[jno]

oh no, don't tell me they've put an out-of-town mall in town? Worst of all worlds.

As for it killing off other jobs - not necessarily. If the economy expands, more people will go shopping, so more jobs. (And more jobs manufacturing the greater number of things that will be sold - wherever this may be.) It's not doing so at the moment, to be sure, but Westfield are well enough placed to sit it out and wait for a recovery.

[hc4361]

The Westfield owned shopping centre at Dudley has done nothing to help Dudley town centre, nor Brierley Hill, Halesowen, Stourbridge and smaller shopping areas.
It's been a disaster for local High Street shopping.

[emmie]

its exactly the same as the one in shepherds bush, same company name. And don't believe that the people working in them are all locals. Mind you some in the SB mall could do with a bit of customer care training.

[chelle7272]

Last year we had the bright and shiny Cabot Circus mall opern... too pricey for your average Bristolian (they thought people would travel from all over the SW).
Many shops have now shut, and the shopiing areas we had before are now quite desolate.

Like JJ I'm not keen on shoping centres anyway - all being doors makes me far tooo hot and claustrophic (could be middle age I'll grant you) and it's full of kids hanging around getting in the way on the stairs and so on. Make me quite grumpy!

[rich47]

Hi em,
Good to hear from you again. You are absolutely right about customer care.....
they have no clue.... and need to learn from our American cousins whose service is second to none.

[emmie]

Rich47, not been able to reply, this AB is slowww, but i agree with you, our American cousins could teach our retail staff a thing or two about customer service, some places i have visited, have almost none.

[dave50]

More boarded up shops and another nail in the coffin of the high street.

[emmie]

dave50, i know. Though the shops around shepherds bush seem to be doing business, but often these massive shopping malls kill off the small operators.
Most high streets are interchangeable, Next, Specspavers, the odd bank, and costa packet coffee shops, that's it.

[jno]

Shepherd's Bush mall charges people for parking, which misses the whole point of malls: you go there to buy enough stuff to fill a car and don't have to pay for parking the way you do on the high street. At the moment Stratford gives you two hours' free parking, but so did Shepherd's Bush at first.

But the real problem is shoppers patronising the malls instead of local shops: if they weren't so fickle, local shops would keep going. As well as economies of scale, malls offer protection from the weather and protection from gangs of hoodies hanging around, so shoppers do have their reasons.

[emmie]

Jno, that's as maybe, but councils or whoever gives the go ahead to these large consortiums, should consider what effect this might have on the high street, not just Shepherds Bush, but all areas across Britain. The high street as we knew it has gone for good. It's not just the patronage of the locals that cause this. But big businesses like Tesco, who don't care who's nose they put out of joint, as long as they get another of their shops on the high street, or retail park. If only councils and local people had looked at the building of these massive malls, and mammoth food retailers in the longer term, many of the local butchers, bakers, and not necessarily candlestick makers might not have gone to the wall. Our shopping area is abysmal, and now have to go some distance to find firstly a decent market, and small affordable retailers.

[dave50]

I could not believe how many people were queing up to get in this place when it opened. Have they never seen a place like this before? It's hardly revolutionary.
I would have thought most people would have been at work during the day.

[emmie]

dave the new one, or the one at Shepherds Bush, if so i remember the news reports, thousands flocking to it, you would think that they had never seen a shop before. I would add that many of the shops in the SB mall would be out of reach of the ordinary shopper, no disrespect intended. Tommy Hilfiger, Prada, and sundry others on the ground level, with the high street type shops like M&S are located on the upper level.