Well, it seems that we’ve all survived the chilling horrors of January and now must face those of February before we can even begin to think of Spring. Personally, I can’t wait for that northern hemisphere warming to kick in. However, in the meantime I have been looking at how recent trends in retail in MK and elsewhere are not only continuing but moving faster and faster.
Retail locations are generally considered to be in one of four groups. We have, in recent years, seen how Quaternary (4th tier) and Tertiary (3rd tier) locations have effectively completely died. Even charity shops are turning their noses up at free-rent locations where shoppers rarely go.
Now, it seems, even formerly very successful Secondary (2nd tier) retail locations are finished, too. Take Bletchley, for example.
Once Bletchley was one of Milton Keynes’ most successful retail locations with, over different periods, a thriving market, a large Sainsbury’s, a large Boots, a Co-Op department store over several floors, a W.H. Smiths, a Wilko’s and not one but two Poundlands – all now gone. More recently the main street, Queensway, has lost both its Barclays and its Lloyds banks and is home to mostly charity shops, nailbars, coffee bars and eateries selling things you mostly cannot get online. There is, however, still a busy Home Bargains, a Peacocks, and two successful butchers’ shops – Palmer’s and Meatworld – which are not only surviving but, in one case, expanding into otherwise emptying premises. Well done to them.
Bletchley’s flagship retail destination was, since its construction by the Milton Keynes Development Corporation in the 1970s, the Brunel Centre; a decent-sized purpose-built shopping centre. In recent years it has become more and more empty. The latest bad news for local shoppers is that both Farm Foods and Select Clothing are quitting.
The Brunel Centre is owned by the council’s wholly owned Milton Keynes Development Partnership which also owns the former Wilkinson’s site. The council also, separately, owns the former Sainsbury’s site and its car park. The council’s plan is to say goodbye to the last of the retail in Brunel Centre, including a Boots opticians, a Holland & Barrett, a Savers health, home and beauty store, a Card Factory, a Cex tech-swap store and a F. Hinds jewellery store and to redevelop the entire Brunel/Sainsbury’s/Wilkinson’s/Car park site as a high-density, high-rise housing development with hundreds of homes.
It is likely many will be used by commuters on the soon-to-be newly reestablished East West Rail between Oxford and Cambridge with its MK hub station in Bletchley.
However, we must ask ourselves whether we really want to see the end of every retail outlet that sells things that we might or could buy online, mostly at cheaper prices. Of course, it costs significantly more to run a store with all its rates, staffing, administration, heating, goods-stocking and security costs than a gigantic warehouse in the middle of nowhere mostly run by robots. This is an inevitability, I’m afraid, and one whose pace is accelerating more rapidly than anyone could have recently predicted.
Looking still further ahead, how long is it before Primary (1st tier) retail sites such as thecentre:mk and Midsummer Place are forced to convert every last shop to an eatery or bowling alley?
Cinema, of course, is also dead and no longer a reasonable option for the remaining giants of retail despite their ever-hopeful and oft-expressed wishes to use cinema to save their centres. Who needs to go to a cinema to see a film when the auditorium is full of noisy people using their phones (which even on silent give off a bright glow), chattering loudly and eating noisy sweets when you can buy a 75-inch TV for less than a grand, download films very soon after release, pause them to get a drink or to go to the loo, add subtitles if those Brooklyn accents are too hard to comprehend and rewind or fast forward at will? It really is no contest, is it?
Yes, an epic blockbuster on i-Max, particularly one in 3D, is still truly amazing. But my vote and the votes of many I know are now firmly going for home-viewing.
So, there we have it; the death of Quaternary, Tertiary and now even Secondary retail is assured. More and more shops will become homes, and the world will never be the same again, but at least it’s going to be getting warmer.
Cheerio.
P.S. Before anyone writes in, I acknowledge that Stony Stratford
is a special case. The town appears to be bucking the trends somewhat and is largely defying the inevitable, although not entirely comprehensively. I might be tempted to write about Stony in a forthcoming column.