HOW A RETAIL PARK NEARLY KILLED A TOWN...
PEOPLE come and go at the busy Wetherspoons, passing its six well-tended wooden plant boxes as they leave. The York Palace is a popular town pub, but next door the once-grand red-brick YMCA building, opened with a hymn in 1910 after the town’s workers contributed some of their pay, is a mess.
You can see how grand the building once was, as in fact was the building that now houses the pub, which has “Llanelly Cinema” written in white stone underneath the balustrades that run along the top.
The YMCA closed years ago, and the businesses that last occupied its ground floor – a fancy dress shop, computer shop, a newsagent, a vertical tanning room and a hair salon – have long gone too, losing the battle to stay afloat that’s being fought in high streets up and down the country.
Many point the finger at parking, out-of-town shopping and a decline in the number of big name retailers as the starting point of their town’s problems, and Llanelli is no different.
There are some success stories in this town, one of Wales’s biggest, with the likes of Jenkins Bakery having a number of shops here and a handful of other new businesses having opened their doors in the last year.
But there’s no hiding from the fact that lots of others have not managed to keep going, or have decided to leave the town centre for Parc Trostre, the large retail park that manages to be both on the town’s outskirts and a very short drive from its centre.
Among them are Vision Express and Marks and Spencer, where a sign in what was once its town centre store says: “This store is now closed”.
Just around the corner from the pub a number of businesses (a diner, a pub, a bar and grill) have come and gone in the building that once housed the Pughs department store, an attraction that people would travel from as far as Neath and Carmarthen to visit.
On Vaughan Street, Home Bargains, Boots and Superdrug have managed to stay put, but it, too, was dealt a blow last year after it was announced that Bargain Buys would be closing its doors, creating another unit to try and fill. So, is Trostre to blame? The first phase of the Parc Trostre development began in 1988, with Tesco opening its doors in March 1989.
There was originally a Tesco store in the town centre, where the Tinopolis Studio stands today.
After Tesco came Halfords, which had a store on Stepney Street, where HSBC is today. At one point the town centre also had a WH Smith, Dixons, Currys, Mothercare, Wimpy and, briefly, a McDonald’s.
But while many have left, there are those that are starting out in trying to make Llanelli town centre the home of their business. But they note the general quality of the shops and lack of parking as issues putting people off venturing in, as well as marking the departure of the anchor stores and the creation of Parc Trostre as the real starting point of the decline.
Tony Harker set up the Snack Shack in Cowell Street with his wife nine months ago, something she had always wanted to do.
He said that there needs to be more in the town centre to attract people in.
“It’s far too quiet in town,” Mr Harker said.
“There’s not enough to attract people in and parking is a problem here. It would be ideal if there was more free parking. Trostre has all the big shops and you can park there for free.
“Without a doubt Trostre was the start of it. There are so many shops and units empty now that we need something to regenerate it and get more people coming into town. We need more variety of shops that sell things that you can’t get online.”
Primark recently took over one of the largest units in Parc Trostre, making the retail park even more appealing for younger shoppers.
More than 300 people queued outside when it opened its doors in 2017, something that would be hard to imagine happening in many town centres.
Susan Leahy, the manager of Stepney Street sandwich shop Refresh, said: “There are not many shops here so people are going to Trostre instead as there are more chain shops. If we didn’t have Trostre we would still have a town centre.
“We need more decent shops, big stores and chains and more independent shops and help them get up and running. We lost M&S and lots of older people came into town to go there.”
Amanda Davies has a different view. She has been trading in the town centre for the last five years and had to relocate from Stepney Arcade to a bigger unit on Stepney Street for her bicycle store, On Your Bike.
“I think the town centre has become a lot, lot better,” she said.
“I think the people who complain about the town centre are the ones that don’t even come here. It’s a lovely town and there’s so much in Llanelli that you can’t get in Trostre. It’s a different shopping experience.
“People who go to Trostre have forgotten about Llanelli. I like shopping and going for coffee but the younger generation like to go to the shops.
“Bigger shops are never coming back to town centres, and that’s not just Llanelli, but I think we could turn some bigger shops into new start-up businesses as a lot of people don’t know where to start.”
Llanelli, of course, is not alone in its battle against out-of-town shopping with traders down the M4 in Bridgend expressing similar issues, saying they desperately lack shoppers and that their businesses are being crippled by business rates.
Some traders blame the pedestrianisation that was done around 15 years ago, while others point the finger at the McArthur Glen designer outlet just off the motorway, with its free parking, late hours and compact layout. In Swansea, we recently counted 29 vacant premises in the city centre.
But just down the road from Llanelli, Carmarthen’s town centre is seeing a different pattern altogether, with independent cafes, restaurants and shops in the town centre just a short walk away from the modern St Catherine’s Walk shopping centre, which is home to the likes of Topshop, Joules, LUSH and Debenhams. This is not lost on traders in Llanelli.
Another issue that comes up in Llanelli is anti-social behaviour, with one trader recently claiming that there’s “no law and order in Llanelli anymore” after five town centre businesses had their windows smashed in one night. Station Road, a gateway into Llanelli and once the centre of the town’s nightlife, has become associated in recent years with drug abuse. One of the road’s longest-serving businessmen, Michael Reynolds, who has run Michael’s Hairdressers for 50 years. said its reputation has harmed his business. “You see people coming up and down here, worse for wear from drink and drugs, and it does put people off,” he said. “I converted it [the house] in 1970, at which time the road was full of townhouses, with families living as one house. As those people got older and died, or they couldn’t maintain it, it was turned into flats. “Eventually, the people on the drugs started moving in and the decent people started moving out. The shops were here, and the people were here, but now we’ve seen it all change, and not for the better.” Leslie Gilbert Jewellers has been open in Stepney Arcade for just over a year, but owner Mr Gilbert also feels that drug use stops people visiting the town centre. “I’ve seen people trade drugs openly in town and behind the arcade,” he said. “A lady came running in here petrified the other week saying ‘can I stay in here for a minute’ because people were trading drugs outside.”