I had been meaning to visit Wrexham ever since I heard that its new shopping centre, which opened 12 months ago, was a very similar development to that proposed for Hereford’s Edgar Street Grid site. Having made the effort to travel to north Wales and study the town’s new Eagles Meadow centre at first hand, it has brought home to me why we should think again about the ESG retail quarter.
Wrexham is easy to get to, with a multitude of dual carriageways and main roads running close to the town centre. We parked in the multi-storey car park above the People’s Market hall. Like Hereford’s Butter Market, the People’s Market still operates in the town centre, selling all sorts of products. I chatted to some stallholders who said that the new centre hadn’t greatly affected their trade. They’re offering different sorts of things to us.” said one. “Anyway, I never go up there, it’s too expensive.”
Walking along Wrexham’s Regent Street, the effect of the credit crunch is clearly visible: Woolworths, Zawie, Priceless Shoes—now marked by empty stores. But it soon becomes apparent that a large number of the town’s most successful retailers—Marks & Spencer. Dorothy Perkins, Boots, Topshop, Next, JD Sports, River Island—had all moved. “WE ARE MOVING TO EAGLES MEADOW” scream the signs in their empty shop windows. It would seem all the ‘big birds’ had migrated east!
About 200 metres away, an elegantly-designed pedestrian bridge leads you across a ring road into the heart of the town’s new retail paradise. It is clear that no expense has been spared. A series of landscaped courtyard spaces draws the eye towards the scheme’s central ‘anchor unit’: a glitzy Debenhams store. Close by there’s an eight-screen Odeon cinema, ten pin bowling and an ice rink.
Standing in the heart of Eagles Meadow you realise that you could be anywhere in Britain. All the big ‘must have’ multiples are here; but not one independent or locally- owned business is to be seen. And what was really curious was how empty everywhere looked. The historic town centre I had just left was bustling with life; Eagles Meadow felt deserted by comparison. Despite the plethora of empty premises (and no big brands any longer) Wrexham town remains busy. This appears to be against all of the received wisdom that is peddled by the proponents of big redevelopment schemes.
Eagles Meadow was planned and executed while the world was awash with cheap credit and a seemingly unending appetite to invest in retail. What Wrexham has got is two town centres: a traditional one with all the little locally-owned shops; and a brand new one, where all the multinationals have clubbed together to create a giant retail experience. It appears to me that they are in direct competition with each other, with one sucking the trade from the other.
Hereford has one thing that has now become increasingly rare in the 21st century: an intact city centre with no out-of-town shopping rival, where its big name traders are presently integrated with all those important little shops that go to make a rich and visually-interesting ‘retail patchwork’. Unquestionably, our city needs some investment and an expansion in our retail offer, but to hand over a single site and allow multinationals to abandon our historic centre would, I believe, be a recipe for disaster.
- Mark Hubbard
Big shops joined the Meadow and left Wrexham City centre