Just been to the Business Breakfast event - great place for discussion and information on what's happening regarding new initiatives in and around Macclesfield including the new proposals for the Town Centre. Where can I get information on the scheme such as downloads of detailed layouts as I was a bit concerned that the new sceme may be too isolated from Mill Street and the smaller retailers on Mill Street thereby will not benefit from the incresed footfall which the scheme will no doubt attract. It could mean all the footfall migrates from Mill Street to the new larger retail units and then everyone drives off home from the 6 level multi storey not even visiting the traditional shopping area. But Macclesfield does need something to boost the Town Centre retail offer, I just hope it links the old and the new such as at Grand Arcade, Wigan and Grand Arcade, Cambridge which still incorporate large retail units, but also manage to maintian linkages within the Town Centre to traditional retail areas and not dissipate the retail centre into two distinct areas as this scheme seems to do with both the new "Avenue" and Mill Street running in parallel with each other as opposed to one running into and feeding pedestrian footfall into the other.
I went to the launch of the latest plan for the regeneration of Macclesfield this morning. The presentation started with an admission by the designers - Wilson Bowden - that their original plans were wrong, and failed to adequately address the needs of our town. That really filled us with confidence - after all they spent a couple of years telling us how right it was. Mark II failed to allay any fears that they still hadn’t got a clue as to what we need. Their plans are a golden opportunity: for the developers, for the builders, for property speculators, for the ultimate property company or pension fund owners and for the exchequer - owing to the inevitable increase in business rates. Sadly, for the town it appears to offer nothing - apart from a nice green space - that is bisected by Churchill Way. A great and safe place for the kids to play then. Mention The Treacle Market to them and you’ll probably get a confused look. They’re apparently oblivious to the fact that the one event that seems to successfully pull in the crowds month in month out is the Treacle Market. To us lesser mortals this would indicate that our potential shoppers and visitors would like to have a permanent site for a traditional outdoor market - is this an alien concept for Southerners? But we will give you a Debenham’s they’ll reply. Do we really want or need a Debenham’s or any other department store? Why do successive generations of planners and councils appear to be obsessed with this objective? “We’ve posed the question and been given the answer” they’ll respond. Ask someone in the street if they’d like a department store and they probably will say yes. Ask them if they’d like a brand new all singing all dancing supermarket (despite the fact we have too many already) and many will still say yes. However, tell the same people that if have these it will mean losing many of the unique, local independent, high street businesses we have in Macclesfield and they will probably say ‘no’. Take a look at the very few town centres in the country that are thriving and you will find a strong local, independent business presence and most of these will have a strong and thriving market - which is where retailing began. If the shops in any town are different than the next, shoppers will come. If the town is merely a clone of the next, they won’t. If you’re mid-way between two large towns - both with a Debenhams or like - which do you go to? Probably the nearest - unless one has something extra, something different. Compare the value to a community of a local independent shop to a multi-national. A local independent shop or business’s sales revenue will support their own employees - who are likely to live locally - and spend the majority of their income locally. A local business will inevitable employ local tradespeople - plumbers, electricians and builders. A local business will almost certainly source all their services locally - printers, book-keeping and accountancy. Each of these businesses, being local, will do the same. All of the local businesses will sustain each other, providing income, security and growth for a town. It’s not unreasonable to assume that virtually 100% of a local business’s income could be spent locally. Compare this to a national company. They will employ local people - although the number of employees per £1,000 of turnover is guaranteed to much less than a small business. Their trade services and building management will almost be sourced centrally. Their business services will be sourced centrally. The costs of these will all leave the town and have no benefit. Their top executives and big salary earners will almost certainly live elsewhere - their income will not benefit the town. Profits generated by the business will go to directors and shareholders and have no long-lasting benefit to the town. Local shopkeepers and business people are committed to their own towns. Their livelihoods are invested in their businesses and properties. If things get tough they will hold out as long as they can. A national concern will simply shut down their operation and move on to pastures new - only returning if the economic climate suits them. National businesses have no interest other than profit - and will move their location as soon as the economy shifts. The benefit of revenues generated by local businesses can be felt for years. The same money is going around and around bringing huge benefits. Please Mr Wilson and Mr Bowden, take your money (yet again) and leave us alone.
Maccborn makes many good comments. Not only are the plans deficient but the entire consultation process stinks. The "Data Feedback Form" is an insult to peoples' intelligence and is based on the assumption that the development will go ahead - "would you rather be shot or hung?". People were being asked to put their responses in an open cardboard box or send them to Wilson Bowden's (part of Barratt) PR agency. I wonder how many responses will get "lost" and it will then be announced that "80% of the respondents supported the plans". So much for Localism. The Cheshire East and local Macclesfield councillors should be ashamed that they are involved in such a murky process. Almost everyone I have spoken to opposes the plans. Yes of course we would like a nice big cinema and more shops but it isn't going to happen. No cinema operator or major retailer (Debenham's, UGC, John Lewis) is going to commit to a scheme for 10 years because the business is just not there. I asked whether there are any firm commitments and was told that as of today there are not. Also, there is a significant discrepancy between the architect's website and the plans on display at the town hall. Apparently, "everything is open to review" i.e. what is built may not bear any relationship to what is shown on the plans and amenity land will be lost.
If Cheshire East has £100 million stashed away, it's OUR money, not money to be used to make Wilson Bowden, Debenhams, a cinema company and a parking company huge profits in return for a few jobs waiting on tables and serving popcorn for the locals. It needs spending on sustainable local services for vulnerable people. If there is no £100 million, is the council planning to borrow it while also making cuts? Seriously, we're a little town in the middle of nowhere that someone wants to turn into a centre for a few large companies to site industrial scale retail operations in exchange for a few Mcjobs for the locals. Like Tesco, most of the profit is taken out of the local community, not "churned" around it. This is basic social economics. There's no attempt to create a sustainable infrastructure for proper local business in any part of this plan. How many cafes will there be compared to the number of small, grass roots, non-retail businesses selling to the rest of the world that could be encouraged to develop here? Besides, Wilson Bowden have a long history of doing this to town centres. We have only to look to places like Chester to see if their promises have been kept. They have not. Repeatedly. Why are they pushing so hard for this? Simple: this is their business. -ripping the heart out of small towns for large pots of council cash that should be spent locally. I've downloaded the oddly uninformative brochure. What the hell does "A sensitive response to the existing Town Centre’s historic architecture" even mean? The town centre buildings are not asking a question.
Wilson Bowden reminds me of Halliburton and Iraq: they both want to clear the landscape in order to re-construct an environment from scratch that allows them and their partners to make oodles of cash. We don’t want Debenhams – they do, it’s in the business plan. We don’t want the scrapping of the landscape – they do, it allows them to create a clone town without the interference of things and people and buildings that have grown up organically over centuries. Let’s repeat it: Macclesfield is a small town neatly situated between cities and the stunning environment of the Peak District. People like it because it has access both to city centre shops and trotting off walking the hills. There’s nothing finer than standing at the top of the 108 steps seeing the hills; there’s nothing finer than standing on Tegg’s Nose and staring at the city, the telescope, the Edge and the airport. What those of us living in the town want is a town centre with independent shops. A market in the market place. The energy of the recent initiatives – Barnaby, Treacle Market, Just So Festival – acting as the platform for their spirit to be realised in the town centre. To use these as model for a town that believes in itself as a town, and not as yet another dreary replicate of claustrophobic clones that die from the inside out like the bitter withy, their hearts ripped out and replaced by the monsters on the fringes, loyalty cards not for the town and its people but for corporates with their warehouses in Jersey. We not not want Wilson Bowden. If there’s that kind of money sloshing around in somebody’s spreadsheet, easy – slash the rents of the shops in the centre. In fact, subsidise anyone with a viable and imaginative plan for a shop opening in Chestergate or Mill Street. Subsidise the Treacle Market as a weekly event. Create a new festival that duplicates Barnaby, maybe a Christmas bonanza that includes rather more than just a lonely tree in a lonely market square. Come on, even Leek manages this. We do not want Wilson Bowden. We do not need outsiders with outside agendas. We need to bring those in the rural areas into the town; we need the farmers and the food producers that are beginning to feature in the Treacle Market; we need the artists and the musicians brought into the centre stage. We need Macclesfield to be a town that has pride in itself; and a town that has a future and builds new myths and new stories. It’s in the right place, which is a great place to start from. I sometimes look from Tegg’s Nose and see Alderley Edge; and think, as I do so, that Alderley Edge, looking from the west to the east, is simply a dress rehearsal for Macclesfield. Simply an attempt to create what is to come. Our geographical position is much stronger than theirs: remember that, and build on that.
The town has to move forward to survive. Competition in anything is good. Tesco and Sainsbury's need competition from someone like Morrison's or Asda. New business will bring other business and visitors. I would agree that we need a proper Market place. We did have one and the Council cut its capacity by building the new town hall extension. Someone has quoted sush initiatives as "The Treacle market" That is a big disappointment and conistsd of junk stalls and highly over priced food stalls. We need to bring visitors in. I don't want to have to go to Manchester or Stoke to shop. I want to be able to shop in Macclesfield for goods that I want not travel to other towns or cities. It would appear that some people have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century as they have never left the 20th. A vibrant town is a healthy town, and so far all we have is over priced night life and streets full of ill behaved drunks and foul mouithed ladettes. That is not the image the town needs. We will also need a Police Service which will service the needs of the people and actually make people, especially the elder, feel secure.
Nebulus and negative. Give people some credit for their efforts. Pete keeps saying "We want" "We need" We don't want" I am wonder who the "We" is you refer to, it certainly is not me or most of the people I know.
What's unclear or ill-defined about a heartfelt, clear and cogent distaste of Macclesfield being sold off to big business?
John Lewis: I am a Cheshire East Councillor representing Macclesfield South and I can assure you that I have nothing to be ashamed of. Besides that, I am a father of three young children. My eldest child is nine and my youngest is one, and it is for their generation primarily that I feel we need a redeveloped town centre. Of course we need to be sensitive to the heritage of Macclesfield, but if we do not redevelop then we will continue to see footfall drop as shoppers frequent more modern retail destinations. This will impact negatively on the whole of Macclesfield. I really can see shoppers/residents from Hazel Grove to the north and Leek in the South looking favourably at Macclesfield as somewhere to shop, spending their money in national retailers like Debenhams and local ones like John Douglas. They will grow to love our local cafes and restaurants just as much as the larger chains so please lets try and be positive about this and feed back our concerns to Wilson Bowden in order to try and shape the redevelopment. As far as I am aware, nothing has been signed yet. More importantly lets accept that our town really needs this and get behind it!
Cllr Druce, Why does the town have to be positive about or accept something we oppose? There is a better and more sustainable way to make Macclesfield prosperous, and that is to create an initiative that encourages small businesses of *all* types, employing a wide range of diverse local skills, to flourish here. Diversity of opportunity is the source of this region's economic strength. Let us harness that strength rather than abandon it in favour of allowing a few outsiders to make a large amount of money from our town in the vague hope that shoppers that come here exclusively to visit their establishments might then spend a few bob in a few local restaurants. A quick web search reveals that Debenhams stores all contain large restaurants. Is it not far more likely that after a shopping expedition, shoppers will not eat there?
Tomo I could not agree more with some of the opinions you have expressed. As far as I am aware, we will lose none of our smaller independent retailers and what better environment for them to flourish in? A new and vibrant town centre with increased marketing and subsequent footfall. You talk about 'diversity of opportunity' - surely that means a choice for the people of Macclesfield in where they spend their cash? As it stands the only choice we have is to shop in small outlets or travel out of town. If the proposed redevelopment did go ahead, would it not cater for a broader number of residents, offering national department stores in addition to independent local retailers? May I suggest, that we all remain open minded and appreciate the fact that opinions differ on the future of Macclesfield Town Centre.
Indeed, but you're still limiting yourself to the idea of a few small retail outlets flourishing in the shadow of a handful of very large retail concerns. For this we must completely remodel the town centre. My idea is to use the money to provide an environment where small businesses of ALL types can flourish and grow. Surely we can agree that's a better idea. The proposed plan would limit the places where the people of Macclesfield can spend their cash to a few lucky businesses and some very large external concerns. At the risk of repeating myself, it would create far fewer jobs than would be the case if we created an environment where many small companies of ALL kinds can develop and grow. We can all have our opinions, but eventually it comes down to what generates the most jobs and business in Macclesfield itself because these are where real prosperity comes from. This plan, I believe, will place Macclesfield's future into the hands of a few large outside companies and will not generate real wealth in the community. It simply advances the "Tescoisation" of the town, which is something as fellow Maxonians I think we're both against.
Tomo you really need to accept that Macclesfield has to change top survive. You need to acknowledge this and embrace it. The town desperately needs new blood to survive. The Council are trying to make Macclesfield a place where not only Maxonian's shop but that we bring in customers, visitors, from other towns and villages. Why should we need to travel into Manchester to give them our custom and money when we can do that in our own town, and in doing so make our town flourish. Give the Councillor credit, as he speaks for his constituents, whereas you speak for your own opinion, which you are entitled to. You just need to face reality and progress. One thing that we will need is a strong Police Force within such a development. Macclesfield used to have it's own Borough Police Force, with a Chief Constable answering to the people through the Watch Committee. Now we are not even a Divisional Headquarters, that has been removed to Wilmslow make Macclesfield nothing more than a satellite entity. Macclesfield is not being sold off to big business. It is embracing big business to breath ,life into the town and to make it a hub for commerce in the area.
Jerry, Why does this argument always seem to come back to simple shopping? Please go back and properly read my ideas. I am certainly accepting that Macc needs to change. However, the further "Tescoisation" of the town provides an essentially limited vision and does not involve real grassroots growth. It sees us pay to rip out the town centre at a cost to us of £100 million, for the benefit of a few large, external retail giants. In exchange, we get a few precarious jobs that will have to find a way to survive in their shadow. Look what happened to your local butcher, dry cleaner and corner shop when Tesco moved in and subsequently expanded into these and other retail sectors. Can a small cafe really compete with the highly convenient restaurant that will be part of a 77,000 ft superstotre? When you go to Tescos and have a brew as part of a shopping expedition, do you ever consider the alternative choice of schlepping your cumbersome shopping bags into town, finding a parking space and going to a cafe? No. My vision for the town results in the sustainable economic growth that will come through a diversity of business types creating local jobs and careers across the board - both retail and non-retail. I don't care whether I'm elected or not. Economic diversification is a sound business principle and it is one this council needs to consider carefully if it is to fulfil its mandate of being the guardian of this town's future. If our elected representatives don't take our views onboard and consider better alternatives to a plan being pressed by a developer with a vested interest, they'll soon find they're no longer in a position of power come election time! Independents are already taking seats from the incumbents as it is. It seems like a no-brainer to me. Macc is a town teeming with small businesses that stretch way beyond the high street. I run two of them. We have a mature culture of enterprise and industry here. We can encourage outside investment and "Make it Macclesfield" by encouraging MANY outside businesses to locate in the town. We can be a boom town in a time of recession. Let's get behind the entrepreneurs of the borough by creating an environment where they become the engines for real, sustainable economic growth. The shopping angle is bogus, anyway. We live in a time where it's easier to shop online for most things. A few mouse clicks and you're done. Why not have the rest of the world shop online with Macclesfield businesses and use some of the earmarked £100 million to regenerate the high street at a local level - with local shops reaping the rewards of that investment, not the likes of Debenhams?
Jerry, It's a little ironic that you admonish another member here to "face reality and progress", before proceeding to wax nostalgic about the Macclesfield police force of yesteryear. Why, exactly, will Macclesfield need "a strong Police Force within such a development"? What has the one got to do with the other? -G-
Tomo and G, whoever, it seams that you are against progress and I suspect that your glass will always be half full. Remain in the 20th century if you both wish. In the meantime may the initiative prove to be a success for Macclesfield, and its population.
That's right Jerry: pointing out the irony in your comment and then posing a perfectly reasonable question (which you did not answer), obviously means I am "against progress"...
I'm not being funny, but how does trying to provide sustainable growth by and for the town I love make me against progress or leave me in the 20th century? As s small business owner, I have to constantly keep one eye on the future and find opportunities that give me the best possibilities for future growth. What I'm against is the "Tescoisation" of Macclesfield for the benefit of a few large businesses and to the detriment of all the small employers in the town. I'm sorry if I've upset you, but there it is. Macclesfield is for everyone, not just Debenmans and Wilson Bowden.
