It's the most expensive place to park per hour outside of London. If you want people to use the amenities and spend money in the shops then the parking should be cheaper. They keep moaning shops are empty/shutting well hardly surprising the idiotic decisions they keep making for parking/park and ride or even letting places like Newmarket road expand. All of that should have been on the outskirts of town. That should have been housing and Arbury Park should have been an industrial estate of shops.
How do small shops survive?
- Thread starter Uther
- Start date
It's the most expensive place to park per hour outside of London. If you want people to use the amenities and spend money in the shops then the parking should be cheaper. They keep moaning shops are empty/shutting well hardly surprising the idiotic decisions they keep making for parking/park and ride or even letting places like Newmarket road expand. All of that should have been on the outskirts of town. That should have been housing and Arbury Park should have been an industrial estate of shops.
so nothing bad is allowed to be said about them!!At least you have a "Park & ride"
Peterborough has a Park & Park - It's called Bourges Boulevard
[Edit]
For those of you who don't know .. Bourges Boulevard is the A15 and is a MAJOR ARTERIAL through our town. It used to free flow but not anymore.
This is why and what they have planned.
In my (rainswept) vid here I have deliberately gone out of the way to arrive at the northern tip (Bright Street) of the roadworks... Look at the queues on the other carriageway
Insanity.
Peterborough has a Park & Park - It's called Bourges Boulevard
[Edit]
For those of you who don't know .. Bourges Boulevard is the A15 and is a MAJOR ARTERIAL through our town. It used to free flow but not anymore.
This is why and what they have planned.
In my (rainswept) vid here I have deliberately gone out of the way to arrive at the northern tip (Bright Street) of the roadworks... Look at the queues on the other carriageway
Insanity.
Last edited:
I disagree, Cambridge cannot support the volume of traffic as it is, if they made parking cheaper it would just get worse. Make the Park and Ride free or cost next to nothing and run even more frequently.
Newmarket road shopping area is a joke.
The only shops that survive are the big chains who can afford to pay the landlord rent. Also they can sell in volume which keeps the costs down, unlike a small shop. But essentially the high street will be chains, chain coffee shops and charity shops because their mass discounted rent.
I now live in a tiny town a town of 18000 total 30000 people in the suburb areas and there are more than ten hairdressers and 4 opticians.... I have no idea how these places survive.
Most non chain shops and cafes seem to last 3 months then just vanish into the ether
Most non chain shops and cafes seem to last 3 months then just vanish into the ether
Soldato
- Joined
- 1 Dec 2003
- Posts
- 3,541
I'd love to go to more local shops to buy but you pay a fortune for anything in them as they have to charge big prices to pay their overheads (and I think it makes them really uptight if you want to return anything)
also you pay parking
also you pay parking
Soldato
- Joined
- 20 Feb 2010
- Posts
- 4,503
- Location
- Darkest Worcestershire
I buy offline, to expensive to park now, Buy clothes offline, shave my own hair, food from out of town supermarkets.
I must save 30% to high street prices. And best of all I don't have to contend with miserable people full of cold/ebola etc.
I must save 30% to high street prices. And best of all I don't have to contend with miserable people full of cold/ebola etc.
To add to what Orionaut posted, I think another key reason is modern small businesses have to pay so much rent. Years ago the shop owner often owned the premises or had inherited it. That will seldom happen these days. Their running costs were negligible. I looked into setting a shop up to grow my business, but I was looking at £14k rent p.a., £10k p.a. in business rate plus other costs such as phone, broadband, heating and electricity. That was going to run into nearly £26k before I even took anything home or employed anyone to help man the shop.
Now, there are a lot of little businesses that set up shop and just don't seem to consider how much of their product they will have to sell to cover these costs. An ice cream parlour went bust recently near where I work. We did a back-of-napkin calculation and worked out they would have to sell over 70 ice creams a day just to break even - that's 9 an hour every day of the week! Same goes for the bread shops, the coffee grinders and the small cafes.
Now, there are a lot of little businesses that set up shop and just don't seem to consider how much of their product they will have to sell to cover these costs. An ice cream parlour went bust recently near where I work. We did a back-of-napkin calculation and worked out they would have to sell over 70 ice creams a day just to break even - that's 9 an hour every day of the week! Same goes for the bread shops, the coffee grinders and the small cafes.
Theres one road in Nottingham with 10-12 Hairdressers/barbers within half a mile (Mansfield road for any locals)
God know how they survive and a lot fo them are next door or 2-3 doors up from each other offering the exact same services
God know how they survive and a lot fo them are next door or 2-3 doors up from each other offering the exact same services
Loads of hairdressers and a few barbours here too, the barbours always have 2 or 3 people waiting anytime i walk past so i imagine they have a pretty much non stop stream of custom. The hairdressers however are constantly closing down or moving to different locations. Just the street that leads on to the town high street alone has 2 barbours and 5 hairdressers, 2 of them only have 1 shop separating them.
The only shops on the actual high street that seem to be constant are the likes of Argos, clothes shops, trainer shops and cash generator. All of the green grocer, butchers etc are long gone and even the charity shops seem to be slowly disappearing.
Tesco being slap bang in the middle of the town center was pretty much the only thing keeping the surrounding businesses ali've and we just found out recently that's closing in April. Not surprising though when the rent (private landlord) was 750k a year, was being put up again this year and it's car park is owned by the council who refused to remove the parking charges. There is no free parking anywhere in our town center.
The only shops on the actual high street that seem to be constant are the likes of Argos, clothes shops, trainer shops and cash generator. All of the green grocer, butchers etc are long gone and even the charity shops seem to be slowly disappearing.
Tesco being slap bang in the middle of the town center was pretty much the only thing keeping the surrounding businesses ali've and we just found out recently that's closing in April. Not surprising though when the rent (private landlord) was 750k a year, was being put up again this year and it's car park is owned by the council who refused to remove the parking charges. There is no free parking anywhere in our town center.