My town centre has just been refurbished. This is where the Council lets a developer knock down a part of what is already there to build virtually the same stuff. The result is that traders in the older bit move into the new bit leaving their old shops empty and what with the building and businesses moving the entire place just always looks run down. OK so we got a new budget hotel but lost local businesses that have around for fifty years or more. A cornerstone store was one of the UK's bigger supermarket chains. Their existing store was quite small, it had already lost business to a newer bigger store about 5 miles away but it met a local need for a lot of older people who would walk or bus in and buy their groceries a day at a time. They moved to the new bit into a store that's twice as big because they sell clothing and "home ware" instead of just food, the sort of stuff old folks don't buy. The old store was in the covered mall; this one is in the open, twice as far from the bus stop and has its own car park. The "shoppers car park charges $1.50 for two hours parking which is refunded at the checkout for customers. By the car park there is a road which carries all the local bus routes, access to the nearby main car parks and lorries servicing half the shopping centre so do you a) divert the road round the edge of the car park so shoppers are safe or b) put the road through the middle of the car park and hope for the best? Answers on a post card please. Yes they have put a pedestrian crossing in but that's to try and deal with the problem that they have created.
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