Thursday, June 28, 2007

v1.8, and Stourport Market says goodbye

v1.8 and it looks like a screw-up at Sony's end they've finally put the full list up - 125 new, 72 deleted, 397 upgraded, 110 downgraded, and 54 reinstated giving a grand total of 2047 titles. Bravo. If you want to see what the list should look like visit this user-created website (thank-you SeesThroughAll on Eurogamer)


Well no Shuttle last week, which meant perusing the online version and will you look at that - Stourport's Farmers' Market is closing down. Damn I hate told you so's.

Honestly though let's split Stourport into three sections - Bridge Street, High Street, and Lombard Street. Where are the supermarkets - Lombard Street, where are the grocers, butchers, and bakers - High Street (and Lombard Street). Where do they put the market - halfway down Bridge Street.

What's in Bridge Street that'll bring shoppers down to it? Pubs, cafes, takeaways, and a couple of clothing stores. For anyone entering the town from the upper town it's too far to walk just to see if there's anything you want and anyone entering from the lower town will continue on to the top and only maybe pick something up on the way back. That's assuming they're walking and not heading straight for the Co-op, Lidl, or Tesco car-parks.

It'd be unfair to compare this to the Kidderminster version, Kiddy had a large pedestrianised area to install a market right in the town centre, but saying that; the Basin Development might prove a boon to a new market. A pedestrianised area with hopefully some coffee shops etc. to lure shoppers down to it combined with more stalls.

I find it amusing that the plan is to draw tourists further up the town when at the same time we could do with drawing shoppers further down.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pretty much the same sort of thing happened in my nearest town. What's happened to all those individual shops? I hope you don't get inundated with banks, building societies and charity shops which is so often the case. Try and persuade your council to have a good farmers' market.

FlipC said...

For all my grumbling we're damn lucky in some ways. We've still got an independent grocer, several butchers and bakers and that's with/despite three supermarkets in town.

To an extent that was the problem, the farmer's market wasn't offering anything that couldn't be got independently elsewhere and was trying to do so on a site such that shoppers had no other real reason to visit.

Hopefully it will get resurrected in a larger form come the Basin Redevelopment. Knowing Derek he'll keep plugging away at it.

Brain flash - it's hopelessly out-of-date but this walk-through shows the town layout. From this point you're starting from the bridge and are heading along Bridge Street to High Street

Anonymous said...

Grinnalls will be closing apparently soon (if thats who u mean by indepent) which isnt a good thing at all.

Lichfield Basin having a market ?? Hmmm i would love to know wwhere they would have it tbh.as the land is all earmarked for houses and flats.Can someone please remind me how in the hell 140+ houses are going to help the town again ???

Wheres OUR museum highlighting OUR town thro the years.Ive always thought the Tontine would have been a fantastic place for a museum but always get told that theres no MONEY to be made......

Thanks civic soicety and advantage west midlands and Stourport forward for shafting any chance of creating any jobs for the town,by using and highlighting its rich history.

FlipC said...

Ah I meant a market on the link between Bridge Street and the basin through Pennywise and Butlers.

140+ houses would help the town if they were subsidised housing, but somehow I'm expecting the equivalent of £120k one-bedroom flats.

As for a museum, the Tontine would have been great, just like the old Post Office; but as you say it's all down to money. Kiddy's only getting its carpet museum due to a by-the-way from Morrisons.