Whilst house-trained politicians mumble the usual boulevards written down for them, traders such as Peter Birch – who is finally living up to his 'independent’ tag – quite rightly point out that a relocation of Tesco from the Marina to Parc Tawe would deliver a double whammy to a commercial hub already dying on its feet from strategy overkill. Even if it were feasible that, having battled through the hard yards of planning appeals to trade on the former gasworks, the store would actually agree to up sticks and leave behind a prime site to a potential competitor, then it would take some hefty inducements and a shedfull of trading safeguards. The irony is that the only way that the council & Hammersons could finance the move is by selling on the land to another cash-rich supermarket giant.
And in the remote event of a deal actually being done, the result will be a reincarnation of Parc Fforestfach at Parc Tawe. In future, visitors will only need to negotiate the gyratory system that highways planners have in mind for the Tawe bridges before finding free parking on the city’s eastern gateway. Punters will never have to venture anywhere near the pound stores and charity shops left behind in the city centre.
The difficult bit that Holley & Co consistently fail to mention when jabbering on about a £1 billion in city centre development is that investment demands a return and a quick one at that. It has to come from somewhere and it is usually in the form of rentals. It is disturbing that no-one in Calamity Hall seems to remember the market factors that turned St David’s into a ghost precinct within less than two decades of its opening. Or perhaps, worse still, it has just never dawned on them.
Time they started learning lessons from SA1.
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