| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Putney High Street or Southside | |
| Posted by: | Dipesh Patel | |
| Date/Time: | 22/11/13 20:11:00 |
| My family and I prefer walking or taking the bus too. Parking isn't always a necessity when it comes to a High Street's success: look at The King's Road! The problems with Putney's High Street are multiple, but the main ones are that there is not one main owner/person to oversee the centre and thus exert a control on what opens there, and there is no anchor store. Wandsworth's Southside has a main owner, and that centre's management can pick and choose the types of shop they wish to rent out. By contrast the High Street in Wandsworth cannot, hence why it is so drab compared to the centre itself. This is also true, to a certain extent with the other centres that have ben mentioned: Kingston with Eden Walk and Bentall Centre; Wimbledon with Centre Court and the more recent Odeon development; and even King's Road, where many of the units are still in the hands of the Earl of Cadogan's estate. In all three, the centre's provide such a good offering, via the direct controls they have exerted, they attract even better stores to them and their "between streets", which in turn attracts more shops, which in turn helps attract better shoppers, creating a virtuous circle. They also, in conjunction with this, have at least one very good anchor or destination store: Chelsea has Peter Jones and Marks and Spencer; Kingston has Bentalls, John Lewis, Marks and Spencer, amongst others; Wimbledon has Elys and Debenhams; and Wandsworth has Primark and a soon to open Debenhams. Thus Putney unfortunately suffers from these two issues greatly: even the M&S is so limited: we live in an area with so many young children, but they don't even stock children's clothes! Our Exchange centre, which does have control of its own affairs is too small to attract an anchor store, thus not helping in the effort to attract people from neighbouring towns to shop here. Our centre has deteriorated further and faster, since the Arndale's takeover swapped the viscous cycle of shop closures and deterioration into a more positive and virtuous one. This in conjunction with the high rents, poor value for money to park, compared to the quality of shops on offer and the clogged and polluted nature of the street, why would anyone but locals choose to shop here? |