Remarkable fall and rise
TAFF Vale Shopping Centre was a hub of hustle and bustle in the 1960s. The centre, more commonly known as Pontypridd’s precinct, was full of independent businesses and keen shoppers.
It was home to stores such as Rainbow Records, Happy Home Furnishings, Peter Mulcahy Estate Agents and a baby shop called The Young Ones. It also had popular takeaway Everest Tandoori and a pet shop.
But many stores at Taff Vale started to close down and were boarded up. Pictures of the site in 2010 showed a centre that was cold, empty and lifeless.
The site was a shell of what it was back in the 1960s and it was eventually torn down.
A number of failed proposals to redevelop the site then followed.
The Angharad Walk scheme was unveiled in 2001 and scrapped by 2008.
Bulldozers moved on to the site in June 2011 and demolished the majority of the Taff Vale Shopping Centre as part of plans to build the Riverside Shopping Centre – but this eventually fell through in 2012.
There were also doomed plans for an £11m shopping centre there in 2014, which never got off the ground.
But over the past few months progress has finally been made and the site is undergoing a huge transformation.
In April 2015 Rhondda Cynon Taf Council became the outright site owner and introduced plans to redevelop it.
The plans include office space with a cafe or restaurant at the building nearest the Gas Road car park