New shops in the city centre

[Steel City Suburb]

Perhaps the best way to attract shoppers isn't the expensive situation of private travel?

Rather, the extension and continued improvement of public transport. The time has come to extend the tram out into the suburbs. Get the population into the centre for a reasonable (cheaper than current) price.

[PaulP]

Originally Posted by Steel City Suburb

The time has come to extend the tram out into the suburbs. Get the population into the centre for a reasonable (cheaper than current) price.

Now that's something I certainly agree with. I also agree wholeheartedly with Robhundall. SCC has done everything in their power to get motorists to stay away from the City Centre in the last 20-odd years. They're now reaping the reward of this policy. The Sevenstone saga didn't start when the recession hit - it started when the first decision was made to make life harder and harder for those with cars in Sheffield.

[robhundall]

Originally Posted by PaulP

Now that's something I certainly agree with. I also agree wholeheartedly with Robhundall. SCC has done everything in their power to get motorists to stay away from the City Centre in the last 20-odd years. They're now reaping the reward of this policy. The Sevenstone saga didn't start when the recession hit - it started when the first decision was made to make life harder and harder for those with cars in Sheffield.

I don't like to be negative, or to gloat at Sheffield's predicaments. I'd prefer to offer suggestions of what could be done within budgets. It's really difficult to see what SCC can do, though, as it's in quite a bad downward spiral at the moment.

Sheffield's booking agents have missed out on several acts recently. It's worrying how many acts miss out Sheffield these days, and that's only going to get worse once the Leeds Arena opens. Sheffield's night time economy NEEDS people to come to the city other than just to drink, and I'm sure that the council can help there; they can help booking agents, and they can provide free parking at night. There isn't a massive conflict with private car parks as they provide additional security which people can choose to use.

Virtually-free weekend parking is a possibility too, but does need a nominal fee to prevent people from parking there all weekend and blocking the city centre.


What Sheffield REALLY needs is better advertising. Advertising of events and destinations within the city itself is perhaps reasonable (though I doubt it), but for those of us outside the city it's not at all obvious what's on offer; we only get to find out if we do some research, which is a pain. None of the Sheffield "what's on" websites are very good, especially not the official tourist website. GET THESE SORTED! It really can't cost that much to get websites and social media to a professional standard. Sheffield needs to attract people, not wait for people to find it. How much TV time does Sheffield get every April? All that airtime is just wasted.

Sheffield also needs to market itself to weekend visitors much, much more - the real ale drinking weekends, the peak district weekends (walk in Edale, stay in Sheffield), family weekends (tied into events, museums, concerts etc..), theatre breaks (getting people to come to Sheffield for 2 days and see 2 plays or concerts), sporting breaks, etc... Get people to visit!

Packaging things together (hotels, free tram travel, restaurant discounts, etc...) has to be made attractive. At present it's expensive and relies on the visitors making a lot of effort to sort it out.

It's only with ventures such as these that the vicious circle can be broken. Sheffield has to win back the custom that is currently travelling right past it to get to other cities.

[Fozberg]

The range and selection of shops is poor, thats the main problem, access and paying for car parking wouldn't be an issue if Sheffield offered something the alternatives didn't.

Free parking and better access both induce trips to the city centre, not necessary new trips, just trips that would otherwise use an alternative, so you arent necessary increasing footfall, just traffic. Other places offer free parking so why not go there, even with free parking Sheffield still wouldnt offer anything better.

More quality shops are needed its as simple as that, better shops leads to more people leads to more shops which leads more ancillary uses, cafes, restaurants, etc, which feeds into the night time economy.

The council needs to sort out Sevenstone and reduce business rates to get the city center full again. Free car parking would just be like sticking a plaster over severed limb.

[robhundall]

Originally Posted by Fozberg

The range and selection of shops is poor, thats the main problem, access and paying for car parking wouldn't be an issue if Sheffield offered something the alternatives didn't.

Free parking and better access both induce trips to the city centre, not necessary new trips, just trips that would otherwise use an alternative, so you arent necessary increasing footfall, just traffic. Other places offer free parking so why not go there, even with free parking Sheffield still wouldnt offer anything better.

More quality shops are needed its as simple as that, better shops leads to more people leads to more shops which leads more ancillary uses, cafes, restaurants, etc, which feeds into the night time economy.

The council needs to sort out Sevenstone and reduce business rates to get the city center full again. Free car parking would just be like sticking a plaster over severed limb.

I agree wholeheartedly that the range and selection of Sheffield’s shops is poor. That is why so many people in the greater Sheffield region do travel to Chesterfield, Meadowhall or Crystal Peaks instead – the shops are better and there is free parking. Why would we pay to go to Sheffield? If we have to drive to Sheffield, then we might as well drive a little further (Nottingham, Leeds, Manchester) and have an entirely different level of shopping.

Using the train, a day return to Manchester or Leeds from Dronfield is very little more than a day return to Sheffield. I just wouldn’t dream of shopping in Sheffield, it’s just pointless.

It’s obvious to say that more quality shops are needed in Sheffield, if only to stop Sheffield’s residents travelling elsewhere to shop.

My point is that SCC just don’t have the money to unilaterally make Sheffield’s shopping offer better. They probably never will. What can they do?

All they can do is to make what they have attractive to people who don’t shop there at present. There are hundreds of thousands of people on the doorstep who never shop in Sheffield, and need an incentive to go there. The very least that they can do is match the competition, and to me that means free or cheap parking.

Rather than your “sticking plaster over a severed limb” analogy, I’d prefer to use “finger in a dyke”; rather than being futile, I believe it would be a minor measure that would slow the decline in the city centre. It’s not a solution, just a step in the right direction. The alternative is just giving up and doing nothing.

What else would you suggest? I’m not starting an argument here, just wanting to know what can realistically be done.

[paulmat]

Originally Posted by Fozberg

The range and selection of shops is poor, thats the main problem, access and paying for car parking wouldn't be an issue if Sheffield offered something the alternatives didn't.

Free parking and better access both induce trips to the city centre, not necessary new trips, just trips that would otherwise use an alternative, so you arent necessary increasing footfall, just traffic. Other places offer free parking so why not go there, even with free parking Sheffield still wouldnt offer anything better.

More quality shops are needed its as simple as that, better shops leads to more people leads to more shops which leads more ancillary uses, cafes, restaurants, etc, which feeds into the night time economy.

The council needs to sort out Sevenstone and reduce business rates to get the city center full again. Free car parking would just be like sticking a plaster over severed limb.

This. Distance from the train station, free parking and all the rest are minor issues.

[Fozberg]

Originally Posted by robhundall

What else would you suggest? I’m not starting an argument here, just wanting to know what can realistically be done.

Id suggest the council lower business rates and allow more short term lets. More importantly id suggest they remove the uncertainty around Sevenstone.

[Irish Blood English Heart]

I agree Fozberg, encourage more independents into the city centre too.

[js1000]

Originally Posted by Master_P

I don't know really what the answer is re parking. Maybe people wouldn't mind paying so much in Sheffield if the shopping experience was better. I'd find it hard to make a day of it in Sheffield shopping wise where as Leeds and Manchester are in a different league

Manchester, Leeds and nottingham are thriving because there is something to draw people into the centre so people will pay the money to park, they have all improved their retail offering where as in Sheffield retail wise nothing ever gets off the ground. You have to ask why that is?

Manchester has a thriving Market Street, more department stores, upmarket King Street/Spinningfields boutiques, a quirky Northern Quarter and a specific shopping centre in the Arndale. Alas, Sheffield just has Fargate really. And that's not to mention restaurants, attractions and specific shops in Manc such as Waterstones which is a bookworms paradise.

I hate to say it but Meadowhall has really killed Sheffield city centre. People say "well why isn't the same happening in Manchester then with the Trafford Centre...?" Well... it actually is if you go to the satellite towns such as Stockport and Oldham which are losing business. Sheffield is definitely not an Oldham but for sure out of town shopping centres do take business. I went for a walk down The Moor a few months ago, its really dead since I moved a few years ago.

The analogy regarding the train station is an interesting one. I was a student at Sheffield Hallam once upon a time and yes, like someone said on here its fantastic to be so close to a train station as a student. I worked it out in my head I was closer to Manchester city centre than I was to Fargate due to the train station being closer. The only thing stopping me was the hour to get there and the £8 there and back, but is that worth it for a greater choice of shops & restaurants?

I would place the onus on Sheffield City Council. Where is the shopping centre in Sheffield? Manchester has one, Leeds is getting one. Where are the quirky independent retailers who offer something different? Like a Northern Quarter or Leeds Kirkgate? Could there be more restaurants or attractions (i.e. a Printworks) to attract business away from Meadowhall? These questions need to be answered. I'm not expecting Selfridges, but I would ask why there is only one thriving street of shops in Sheffield and little more than that. I know markets are frequently held in Sheffield but the city needs some more concrete than that.

[AndrewC]

Here's a point to throw in to the mix.

The shopping environment is shit. Crap roads, crap pavements, crap looking shops and buildings. This is something that is massively important now that internet shopping has taken a lot of the necessaity of shopping out of the picture - nowadays it's about the experience. This is why parking, access etc are issues, albeit minor ones.

And it's also why the covered spaces, new buildings and new streetscapes of Sevenstone were going to be so important. Hey, if Hammerson don't want to build it then the council need to look at other options maybe? I'm not sure how it all works, but they need to stop bitching and start acting, that's for sure.

[NewcastleOwl]

Originally Posted by Fozberg

Id suggest the council lower business rates and allow more short term lets. More importantly id suggest they remove the uncertainty around Sevenstone.

How do you suppose SCC lower the business rate when it's effectively set by central government?

Ratable value (which I understand is a central government agency's valuation of theoretical rentable yield and other historic rates)
multipled by
the Uniform Business Rate (which is uniform across England, apart from City of London, and subject to various reliefs for the likes of charity shops, and is set by HM Government)
= business rate.

SCC are responsable for billing and collection of business rates (though the pricing as I say is out of their hands), they then have to send all the revenue to central government where it's pooled then redistributed back to all the local authorities according to some funding formula.

This country has become so centralised, well England at least, that local authorities have very few tools and no money to significantly assist business in their area.


On a similar theme, though going away from the main subject of this thread, I'm sure I once read that SCC received half as much per head from central government as Newcastle City Council, indeed less than most northern urban authorities; I seem to recall that the late Jan Wilson was kicking off about it, understandably. Local Authorities are funded from Council Tax revenue directly (not as big a proportion as you might think), the business rate pool allocation and other grants both from cental government according to redistribution formulae. This central government part is all important and I can't possibly see on what grounds they could allocate somewhere like Sheffield (with all its desperate need) less per head, let alone half, than more prosperous Newcastle city. Economic indicator stats I read last year showed unemployment significantly higher in Sheff, GVA lower, GDP lower, etc. Newcastle certainly has large underpriveledged neighbourhoods but the LA area (city) as a whole performs quite well; the perception from outside often being more negative than the reality because the huge North Eastern England region as a whole is so poor compared to most.

[AndrewC]

Well I think more than most cities the reputation of Sheffield is poor; disliked by tory governments and invisible to most other brits.

The important thing is that Sheffield doesn't suffer from any other negative, nationally-publicised bad press or reputational damage any time soon.




D'oh.

[js1000]

Originally Posted by AndrewC

Well I think more than most cities the reputation of Sheffield is poor; disliked by tory governments and invisible to most other brits.

The important thing is that Sheffield doesn't suffer from any other negative, nationally-publicised bad press or reputational damage any time soon.




D'oh.

Trust me, most outsiders (like myself) blame the police not the city or its citizens. I hope those responsible for the cover up and caught and punished considering the position of they held and abused.

The only thing that riles me is how they kept the Leppings Lane name for the stand and street. We got the park and ride from Middlewood a few years back. When 'Next stop Leppings Lane' my father winced and he's not even a Liverpool fan. A bit of a PR disaster for the city, particularly for visitors.

I appreciate the history of Hillsborough and Sheffield - but the stand, adjoining street should just be renamed to the West Stand and Wednesday Street perhaps. By keeping the name its like rebuilding two exact replicas of the Twin Towers - its quite morbid.

[Crookes]

Originally Posted by js1000

Trust me, most outsiders (like myself) blame the police not the city or its citizens. I hope those responsible for the cover up and caught and punished considering the position of they held and abused.

The only thing that riles me is how they kept the Leppings Lane name for the stand and street. We got the park and ride from Middlewood a few years back. When 'Next stop Leppings Lane' my father winced and he's not even a Liverpool fan. A bit of a PR disaster for the city, particularly for visitors.

I appreciate the history of Hillsborough and Sheffield - but the stand, adjoining street should just be renamed to the West Stand and Wednesday Street perhaps. By keeping the name its like rebuilding two exact replicas of the Twin Towers - its quite morbid.

...but then you'd have Scousers complaining that Sheffield was trying to distance itself from the events of that day, ignoring history etc.

I can't think of any examples (of the top of my head) of grounds/ stands that were renamed (Valley Parade, Ibrox...) after deaths like that.

[Skychaser 2005]

[QUOTE=js1000;95047156]I would place the onus on Sheffield City Council. Where is the shopping centre in Sheffield? Manchester has one, Leeds is getting one.

Actually Leeds already has 5 other city centre shopping centres before Trinity opens.

I have never been able to understand why a city the size of Sheffield does not have a major indoor shopping centre. I suppose Meadowhall has taken the place of a city centre shopping centre which is part of the problem for Sheffield city centre. Leeds City Council did not allow the White Rose Centre to build such a vast size as Meadowhall, so Leeds City Centre was not affected in such a way, although now White Rose is expanding which is fine as Leeds city centre has Trinity and Eastgate launching along with all the other shopping centres.

[Irish Blood English Heart]

I must admit when I was looking at a house on Leppings Lane on rightmove that looked a bargain, the name does put you off somewhat... Should've called it the Memorial Stand and Memorial Lane or something.

[Steel City Suburb]

Originally Posted by Irish Blood English Heart

I must admit when I was looking at a house on Leppings Lane on rightmove that looked a bargain, the name does put you off somewhat... Should've called it the Memorial Stand and Memorial Lane or something.

No.

[Bladerunner]

In my opinion the council missed a great opportunity to put a canopy over the Moor as part of the renovations, as was discussed on the Moor thread. Can't see it as being hugely expensive when you weigh up the benefits.

[AndrewC]

It could be a half mile long Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.

[js1000]

Originally Posted by Crookes

...but then you'd have Scousers complaining that Sheffield was trying to distance itself from the events of that day, ignoring history etc.

I can't think of any examples (of the top of my head) of grounds/ stands that were renamed (Valley Parade, Ibrox...) after deaths like that.

I'm not proposing changing the name of Hillsborough, just the stand.