We wonder if this is now the last former Woolworths in the area not to be taken over by another retailer - so far there seems to have been no interest in it at all. Certainly it leaves a void on both Merseyway and Princes Street, really dragging the area down.
The only response from the rulling Lib Dems has been a rather curious recent interview with the Stockport Express, in which the Executive Councillor for Regeneration reminded us of his last brainwave, which was to ask Gordon Ramsey and Jamie Oliver to open restuarants here. Although these optimistic approaches were predictably rebuffed, the councillor concerned has now had another idea - he would like the former Woolworths to be turned into "food court" along the lines of the one at the Trafford Centre (an assortment of fast food takeaways with some chairs and tables in the middle).
This is a highly questionable idea on a number of levels (althought the Trafford Centre food court is styled on the Titanic, which may be an appropriate metaphor where the Lib Dems are concerned) and there is no indication of who would pay for it, but the main thing it shows is that our Lib Dem council does not, and cannot deliver. Articles like the one in the Express are intended to give the impression (at least to the untrained eye) that the Council is busy doing things, but it isn't the Council's job just to say what should happen in cases like this - the Council's job is to make these things happen. After all, they have had nearly twelve months where Woolworths in concerned, and there hasn't even been an attempt to tidy up the empty and broken shopfront.
Further underlining Stockport's decline as a shopping centre is the news that Starbucks, further down Merseyway (pictured above), has closed down, presumably to be followed by the in-store branch at Borders in the Peel Centre, which is holding a closing-down sale. Could this be a sign that the kind of customer who is prepared to pay for expensive coffee no longer bothers to come into Stockport? If Stockport is to regain its place as a major shopping centre for the surrounding area (something which it has largely lost over the past decade), these are customers we must win back - otherwise we will be left just with pound shops and takeaways.
It is time for some action from our Lib Dem council - not just more talk, and expensive consultants' reports which never seem to come to anything
