All in the name of progress?
Bus Station feature with Anna.
One of the most endearing characteristics of the average Northamptonian is a healthy scepticism of change.
It sometimes seems a visceral resentment to anything that smacks of progress, possibly an echo of the sturdy Midland peasant stock that found even the enclosure movement daunting.
Change, simply for the sake of change, can cause resentment and anger. But times do change and any community that fails to recognise the need to move and adapt is bound to stagnate.
Northampton has over the past 40 or so years seen massive changes. Central to this has been the shift in employment patterns.
From a traditional industrial manufacturing town based around one trade, the town has become a significant distribution centre, with a large element of service industry and an increasingly significant highly-skilled technical base.
A growing university element has also significantly changed the nature of the town.
Northampton is regenerating, or more precisely reinventing itself, with a younger, more diverse cultural population and a whole new set of demands.
Having stated the obvious there is still the elephant in the room that has defied local authorities for at least three decades.
What to do about the town centre?
It has evolved piecemeal and sadly the cracks are beginning to widen.
Despite all the visible changes in employment patterns, this town is still a relatively low-wage economy and its town centre will reflect that in the nature and type of retail outlets.
The Market Square is a glorious historic anachronism and needs to be cherished as such.
However, shopping habits have changed significantly. Most people do their weekly shop in out-of-town centres with huge car parks and large retail outlets.
On top of that, the rapid growth of online shopping and home delivery opportunities has meant that no longer do we venture down to the Home & Colonial or Mac Fisheries for “something special for tea”.
Shopping in the town centre is much more a leisure activity and so much of the “experience” comes under the umbrella of “retail therapy”.
What most people seem to fancy is a stroll round the historic and quaint Market Square and then popping into the small individual local shops with personal service and an idiosyncratic niche quality.
An interesting trend that reflects shopping as a leisure activity is the surprising growth of coffee shops and the relative decline of licensed drinking abattoirs, a cultural shift that may reflect a more sober society, maybe even a return to the 18th century coffee houses where the new enlightenment is a constant topic of conversation.
So do we need an expanded shopping mall?
Maybe there is a place for another Central Milton Keynes? But shopping malls seem so 1970s. Rather like the old High Street, their time is gone.
Would anyone seriously contemplate starting a Grosvenor Centre from scratch today?
So will an enhanced Grosvenor Centre really be the spark that will kick off town centre regeneration? Or is it just a scheme that belongs to a different age?
In fact the Grosvenor Centre expansion was an idea from the last century, formed when shopping patterns were so different.
The Legal & General strategy, as owners of the Grosvenor Centre, is predicated on the need to have a larger mall, with many more national chain stores and to replicate what happens in most other towns.
For almost two decades they have argued that a modern centre, with a large anchor department store is the right solution.
Frequent letter writers beg for a John Lewis but given their proximity at MK, that seems unlikely. Just as unlikely is the arrival of a branch of Harrods or a spanking new Harvey Nichols.
So it’s either more House of Fraser or the relocation of Debenhams from the Drapery.
Here’s where that old niggling Northamptonian dislike of change comes in. If Legal & General now think the time is right, it must know who the new anchor store is going to be. What better way to confound the naysayers and doubters than to announce the next wonder of the retail age!
It would appear that Matt Hammon from NCC’s contractors is not totally convinced that everything is hunky-dory. Speaking about the demolition of the bus station and the move to the Fishmarket site he said: “The Fishmarket has its constraints but we are mitigating those and doing the best we can.
“If this (the bus station) doesn’t get approved then the shopping centre won’t be developed. But there is no guarantee that it will be once the bus station is built.”
So right now it still appears a punt in the dark, but L&G is sitting pretty. It has, after all, got the local authorities and WNDC to fund the demolition of the bus station, the building of a new bus interchange, paying off Stagecoach and thrown in is the Mayorhold car park.
We need a regenerated town centre; trouble is the only regeneration that I can see at the moment is the regeneration that is taking place in the profits of Legal & General, that well-known local philanthropist.
The town’s MPs are happy to see the bus station go because its aesthetically ugly. I understand that, but at the end of the day, it’s a functional bloody bus station, not a renaissance palace!
Trouble is, by the time the bus station is a pile of rubble we might have made a very bad decision.
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