Major retailers set for town centre redevelopment?

Want to buy this photo?

Rochdale Town Centre

Councillor Farooq Ahmed, who holds the Rochdale Borough Council finance portfolio, has said that ‘big name retailers’ have already signed up to move into the £150 million Town Centre East Development which will be built around the current bus station.
Rochdale Council and Genr8 are expected to sign a contract soon.

The council has been working on a formal agreement with the company for three years. However, over the past three years, Genr8 have struggled to get retailers to sign up to the project and it was redesigned earlier this year after a major national supermarket pulled out.

The council is hoping that Town Centre East will emulate the success of Bury’s Rock Centre; the last big development of its kind to be built in the north-west before the economic recession.

Genr8 is based in Manchester with offices in Brook Street, London and on its websites says that its vision is “…to create better places - places that are lively, healthy and diverse, sustainable and safe.. Places where people will want to spend time and that will improve people’s quality of life…”

None of the ‘big name retailers’ said to have signed contracts to take up space in the new centre has yet been named. This may be due to commercial sensitivity but has led to scepticism by some local commentators.

On BBC’s ‘Breakfast Show’ this morning, a spokesman from British Independent Retailers spoke about high business rates being partly responsible for slow growth in the sector and said: “Rochdale is subsidising Regent Street’.

Simon Danczuk MP, has been heavily critical of the government’s decision to increase business rates and has campaigned for a rebate of these for local traders.