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Redevelopment Closer Than Ever?

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Author Topic: Redevelopment Closer Than Ever?  (Read 1820004 times)
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« Reply #28080 on: May 13, 2021, 14:50:28 pm »

It was always previously a Northampton issue though. The Council commenced the destruction of Northampton Town Centre (and the rest of the town for that matter) in the late 1960's.

From experiences of growing up I'd say that it was more recent than that from a town centre perspective. e.g. the Grosvenor Centre arrived in the mid-70's, the Market was vibrant, as was Peacock Place, Abington Street, Gold Street and the College Street chippy! Even in the 80's (after MK was built) a good friend of mine arrived from 'Oop North' and loved it here, always describing it as a vibrant market town. Then they ripped the cobbles up...Peacock Place died a death....the Grosvenor became outdated and then the closure of the big boys coupled with the rise of the retail park.
I can't see any feasible way of regenerating town centres and if anything they'd be better concentrating on making them places to visit for leisure and entertainment, along with incentivizing local start up businesses. Places like Vintage Guru are fab and I'd always support them.

Meanwhile...our two football grounds have always been sh*t. One a borrowed summer carpark and the other a council flat pack which has been partially dismantled!
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« Reply #28081 on: May 13, 2021, 16:19:02 pm »

Agree, 60s, 70s and early 80s the town was a great place. It seems to me that rather than trying to keep up with change and look at other ways of keeping the town going the council seemed to decide that it was a beast that needed putting to sleep.
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« Reply #28082 on: May 13, 2021, 16:52:52 pm »

Not really redev. But I see the pitch is being relaid...
Fkucing hell Tel that made me laugh, re seeding the pitch is KTs version of the redevelopment starting.
I am giddy with excitement about the portkabin at Moulton, that will show potential signings our ambition, oh hang on KT is saving that for next season.
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« Reply #28083 on: May 14, 2021, 01:30:48 am »

From experiences of growing up I'd say that it was more recent than that from a town centre perspective. e.g. the Grosvenor Centre arrived in the mid-70's, the Market was vibrant, as was Peacock Place, Abington Street, Gold Street and the College Street chippy! Even in the 80's (after MK was built) a good friend of mine arrived from 'Oop North' and loved it here, always describing it as a vibrant market town. Then they ripped the cobbles up...Peacock Place died a death....the Grosvenor became outdated and then the closure of the big boys coupled with the rise of the retail park.
I can't see any feasible way of regenerating town centres and if anything they'd be better concentrating on making them places to visit for leisure and entertainment, along with incentivizing local start up businesses. Places like Vintage Guru are fab and I'd always support them.

Meanwhile...our two football grounds have always been sh*t. One a borrowed summer carpark and the other a council flat pack which has been partially dismantled!

As with singcobb completely agree with all of this. In recent decades the planning decisions around the town seem to have been made by a chimps tea party committee.
The changing face of retail is obviously a huge factor for the town centre but with a little ingenuity and thought the town centre could still thrive and regenerate with independent retailers, social spaces, more accommodation, office space for start ups, techs and free parking etc. What they have done to the market square is a absolute travesty.
The Sixfields area, inside the ring road, is in danger of dying in just the same way by inward, risk averse thinking on the part of idiots. Warehouses or dull housing estates that's all they understand.
Whoever is in charge of planning should be arrested for crimes against the town, removed and replaced before a Tesco arrives next to the stadium.
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« Reply #28084 on: May 14, 2021, 06:58:19 am »

Warehouses and dull housing estates give the council the best return on their land I’m afraid that’s why the country is full of them.
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« Reply #28085 on: May 14, 2021, 10:02:47 am »

It was always previously a Northampton issue though. The Council commenced the destruction of Northampton Town Centre (and the rest of the town for that matter) in the late 1960's.

Interesting comment as the town was described as a bustling prosperous town in mid to late 60’s! Where you living in Northampton during the period you mention?
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« Reply #28086 on: May 14, 2021, 11:19:16 am »

Memories of Emporium Arcade, Notre Dame, Derngate Bus Station, Peacock Way, Jimmy's End Bus Depot, Middy Meadow, Coop Arcade, Giles' Sports, The Odeon, the Fishmarket; they were from the Northampton that I remember before I left in 1977.

https://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/heritage-and-retro/retro/buildings-are-sorely-missed-northampton-residents-3009845?page=1
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« Reply #28087 on: May 14, 2021, 12:18:59 pm »

Warehouses and dull housing estates give the council the best return on their land

Didn't know you were on the council? Kept that quiet.

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« Reply #28088 on: May 14, 2021, 12:26:01 pm »

Memories of Emporium Arcade, Notre Dame, Derngate Bus Station, Peacock Way, Jimmy's End Bus Depot, Middy Meadow, Coop Arcade, Giles' Sports, The Odeon, the Fishmarket; they were from the Northampton that I remember before I left in 1977.

https://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/heritage-and-retro/retro/buildings-are-sorely-missed-northampton-residents-3009845?page=1

Some fantastic architecture lost forever, although nothing quite like No. 11!
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« Reply #28089 on: May 14, 2021, 13:01:37 pm »

Memories of Emporium Arcade, Notre Dame, Derngate Bus Station, Peacock Way, Jimmy's End Bus Depot, Middy Meadow, Coop Arcade, Giles' Sports, The Odeon, the Fishmarket; they were from the Northampton that I remember before I left in 1977.

https://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/heritage-and-retro/retro/buildings-are-sorely-missed-northampton-residents-3009845?page=1

It is a real shame, the state of the town now. Growing up in the eighties and early nineties, I felt the town centre could hold its own with any town centre shopping offering outside the big cities. Retail has changed and the rise of out of town shopping centres has damaged retail across the country. That said, it's a fallacy that online shopping has killed bricks and mortar retail. People still like mooching round shops, they just need to be inspired to go there.

There's no incentive to go into Northampton town centre now though, it's all cheap clothing, pop up crap holes selling s***e, arcades and mobile phone repair shops that I wouldn't trust as far as I could throw them.  Beatties/House of Fraser going was the mortal blow but M&S pulling out and then Debenhams folding delivered the coup-de-grace. Honestly, if you wanted to go and buy something nice as a gift, say, where in the town centre could you get it? The only reasonably high class shops left are jewellers like Steffans and Jones, but they are pretty niche.

St Giles Street is a nice area and has some good independent shops, but it's a small street and isn't big enough to attract shoppers to the town on its own the way similar areas in places like York can. Most of the units on Abington Street are too big for independents to afford (especially given the myopic outlook of the council when it comes to business rates and battering retailers over the head with mandatory additional charges like the BID, which is effectively an additional tax) so the area populated by independents is never likely to grow to the size where it becomes self-sustaining; indeed, with reduced footfall to the "main" shopping areas there's likely to be fewer shops in St Giles Street as their passing trade dies away. With the extent of the council's imagination seemingly being limited to "I know, let's turn it into a more student accommodation" every time a building becomes empty I despair for the future of our town.

Oh for the golden days, watching the monkey outside Gordon Scotts, wandering through the Co-Op arcade, the antiquated lifts that still had an operator in the Co-Op itself (along with the odd, labyrinthine interior that had clearly organically grown over time with no real planning), Spinadisc, Taylor & McKenna toy shop, Dillons, the wonderfully claustrophobic toy department downstairs in Watts, Readwells, C&A, Woolies, the vast array of Christmas tat in BHS....
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« Reply #28090 on: May 14, 2021, 13:22:53 pm »

My first job was operating the lift in the Co Op in the late 80's!

I use to get the bus from Wellingborough, and Northampton was always seen as the rolls royce of a town centre.

I cant remember the last time I went into Northampton Town centre for shopping

It was so long ago I would think this redevelopment thread had not even created!
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« Reply #28091 on: May 14, 2021, 15:19:23 pm »

My first job was operating the lift in the Co Op in the late 80's!

I use to get the bus from Wellingborough, and Northampton was always seen as the rolls royce of a town centre.

I cant remember the last time I went into Northampton Town centre for shopping

It was so long ago I would think this redevelopment thread had not even created!

Covid has meant every town centre looks like Northampton now.
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« Reply #28092 on: May 14, 2021, 15:39:20 pm »

Veering completely and totally off topic, all this talk of the Co-Op in town has bought back one of those childhood memories that you can still vividly recall even though it was the best part of 40 years ago now...

As a kid I was seriously into Action Force, which for the uninitiated was the makers of Action Man's attempt to get into the Star Wars figure market (I also had loads of those but by now Return of The Jedi had been out for a while and Star Wars toys were dwindling away, so Action Force had taken their place in my affections). Action Force figures weren't particularly well articulated, except for the odd one that came with a vehicle, which years later I'd learn were repaints of American G.I. Joe toys. Those ones were brilliant, although I only had a couple of them because my parents budget would only stretch to a vehicle at birthdays and Christmases.

I remember that in the last couple of issues of Battle Action Force comic they had started to introduce new characters which I was a little disgruntled about as they seemed to be moving away from stories about the characters I had figures of. Then, this one Saturday afternoon after I'd been dragged around town by my parents as I was every bloody week, bored silly by my dad who for some reason insisted on standing in front of the window of Radio Rentals at 4:45 for 10 minutes, we were on our way home. As it did every week, this involved walking up Abington Street, across the Mounts and down to the roads off Bailiffs Street where my dad would always park because he refused to pay for parking. As we went past the Co-Op I asked if we could go and look at the toys, which they reluctantly agreed to. I can still remember the layout in their really crappy toy department, right in the middle of which was this standalone wire stand, covered in Action Force figures. As I drew near my jaw dropped. They were new ones. And they were all fully articulated! I stood there, feverishly flicking through card after card with figure attached in see-through plastic bubble, the penny dropping as I did so - that's why all these new characters were being introduced in the comic - there was a new toy range!!

Despite my pleas, my parents weren't having any of it and moved me along. All these new figures, and I wasn't getting one! The world seemed a very dark place as they shooed me out of the shop, muttering and grumbling. "Wait!" I thought as we headed up the road, "What if Watts have them too?" My devious child mind spotted a second chance of victory and I managed to steer them in there, just before they were due to close, virtually running down the stairs and, sure enough, right at the end of the middle aisle, on the right hand side, they had them too. A smaller selection, but they had them. I think by now I was pretty much hyperventilating and my parents finally took pity on me, and so it was I came to have Storm Shadow. A white clad ninja, you could slide his swords into his backpack and everything!

Soon after they started giving me pocket money and every week I'd spunk £2 of my £2.40 on a new Action Force figure the day they gave it to me. I never got tired of getting a new one, but nothing ever hit the sheer excitement of that first moment of spotting this glorious set of new toys looming into view in the Co-Op.

Talk about simpler times, it's hard to imagine getting that excited about anything now, but it's also hard to imagine my kids getting that excited about anything too. Now everything is launched amidst a big multimedia marketing campaign they'll probably never know the feeling of just stumbling across something that you didn't know existed like that.

If they could bottle that feeling though, THAT would get people back into the town centre!
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« Reply #28093 on: May 14, 2021, 20:40:55 pm »

To my parents mortification I once pressed the emergency stop button on the escalators in the Co-op leaving an elderly shopper stranded. Lost my shoes due to taking them off at the entrance of another department store that was carpeted and got myself jammed in the automatic sliding doors at Adnitts. Oh and asked a store assistant at M&S who had a course of chemotherapy if she was Telly Savalas sister? Not on the same day though. If they could bottle that feeling parents would never go back?
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« Reply #28094 on: May 14, 2021, 21:23:01 pm »

This has become quite morbid now. The reason 'High Streets' have had their day is because the experience is not valued nowadays. It isn't the Council we have to blame nor greedy landlords, in fact we don't need to 'blame' anyone unless, of course, we are looking to assuage our guilt. It is, quite simply, the end of a type of purpose.

Folk no longer wish to spend a Saturday morning wandering from retail coven to retail magaluf. The items a human being has decided they 'need' can be ordered to be delivered to the box they have decided to inhabit. That way they don't need to spend time admiring an insipid Wimpy with lashings of french mustard, instead, they can spend unholy hours thrashing an unseen enemy on a glass screen.

The sh!tty bargain basement hovels that still eke out an existence there are able to do so because there are still folk who can tear themselves away from Rachel Riley and Harry Styles for a set of duds. Even that will eventually de-compose in the afterlight.

This,however, is a good thing. Nostalgia is for the dying. We move on and sooner or later the town 'centres' will find their way. There is nothing to be gained by mourning the decline of an era that is slipping into the ether. Entropy is at the heart of human existence, once we have smashed out hate we can anticipate love.

I say praise the decline, embrace it, for tomorrow we die.

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« Reply #28095 on: May 14, 2021, 21:29:48 pm »

To my parents mortification I once pressed the emergency stop button on the escalators in the Co-op leaving an elderly shopper stranded. Lost my shoes due to taking them off at the entrance of another department store that was carpeted and got myself jammed in the automatic sliding doors at Adnitts. Oh and asked a store assistant at M&S who had a course of chemotherapy if she was Telly Savalas sister? Not on the same day though. If they could bottle that feeling parents would never go back?

Ha ha! And there's me thinking I was a pain in the arse hassling my parents for a two quid toy!
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« Reply #28096 on: May 15, 2021, 06:36:18 am »

I remember going to the county ground to watch my team and now a few years later i'm going to watch(when allowed) my team in a 3 sided football ground, how things have changed.
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« Reply #28097 on: May 15, 2021, 07:13:43 am »

To my parents mortification I once pressed the emergency stop button on the escalators in the Co-op leaving an elderly shopper stranded. Lost my shoes due to taking them off at the entrance of another department store that was carpeted and got myself jammed in the automatic sliding doors at Adnitts. Oh and asked a store assistant at M&S who had a course of chemotherapy if she was Telly Savalas sister? Not on the same day though. If they could bottle that feeling parents would never go back?

I'm forming a profile here !!
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« Reply #28098 on: May 15, 2021, 07:29:02 am »

I remember going to the county ground to watch my team and now a few years later i'm going to watch(when allowed) my team in a 3 sided football ground, how things have changed.

Are you in Oxford? Our ground isn't three sided, the roof is a bit higher than it was but we accommodate the same  number of spectators (slightly more) that we did with the lower version.
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« Reply #28099 on: May 15, 2021, 07:56:20 am »

Isn’t it strange how people see things different.

With the exception of the COVID situation, I see the current climate as one with more opportunities than ever. I’m not one for nostalgia. We were either employed by huge established organisations, on very poor wages, with awful working conditions. Then forced into spending our meagre returns in a series of overcrowded, poorly stocked, dimly lit dumps, that had no regard for the shopper. Credit rates for those that could not afford to by outright were extortionate. We had no choice in terms of energy providers, transport provider etc. Cars production was massively state funded, in return you got a heap of shyte, produced by a bunch of unmotivated tossed who threw down their tools every time they wanted a day off. In turn screwing over anyone the could for another few quid.

Whilst the high street is bereft of the outdated and outmoded department store model, shopping is thriving in out of town facilities. With a multitude of modern shopping opportunities, with up to date facilities, including toilets, restaurants and leisure facilities on tap.

Online shopping is thriving. Affording choice for all. Plus the opportunity for those who find it hard to get to the shops, to enjoy the same comprehensive choice as the rest. New start ups and self employment is at an all time high. Once again offering innovative and fresh ways for customers to exercise a choice.

Rarely are peoples romantic notions of the “good old days” based on what was really the start reality of the past. Opportunity is now rife. These days, in my opinion. With the exception of disability or illness. Your ambition is only limited by your imagination.
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