Gappy

The number of gaps now appearing in Rhuthun’s streetscape is starting to become alarming, following shop closures. There are now three prime site vacancies on or about St Peter’s Square.

Both Majestic Travel and Square Interiors closed last week. Square Interiors only opened in in May 2007. It appears that it has relocated to Sealand, near Queensferry. Majestic Travel, though, has been part of the furniture in Rhuthun and the Square for some years. Nearby long established Lucinda fashions closed this month, following the retirement of the proprietress.

Then there’s Slater’s, which closed its service department at the end of last week and had shut its sales by the middle of this. There’s no hint that poor car sales are responsible for Slater’s move. It’s more the cost of updating what are crowded and unfit for purpose premises—plus the land value, of course.

It’s reported that Evans’s body repairs next door to Slater’s will also shut, again due to retirement. But it’s an opportunity to sell the site at the same time as Slater’s sells its land. The Slater’s site is most likely to go for residential but there was once some hope that there’d be commercial development beneath. What chance of this when there are already such a large number of vacant premises?

And relatively long standing Doodles in Clwyd Street is also about to close, at the end of this month. This paint-your-own-pottery come café has quite a unique selling point in the creative pottery it offers. It had already pared back its opening hours outside weekends and school holidays to Wednesdays to Saturdays only.

And then there’s Discount Designer Wear in Upper Clwyd Street, another recently opened shop (in February!), now apparently closed. It only began trading in Rhuthun in January. After only a few days, it stopped selling men’s clothes but there was an abundance of women’s clothes on offer.

It didn’t seem so long ago that we were saying Rhuthun was bucking recession with store openings. What’s happened now? Is it the recession? Is Rhuthun’s catchment not big enough for these shops? Has the internet affected Majestic Travel? Is the over supply of cafés in Rhuthun affecting overall business and Doodles in particular?

What we do know is that town footfall is generally down, post-Tesco.