It was good to speak to Paris Troy on BBC Radio Somerset this morning about Taunton, the town’s ex-Debenhams (my 2012 pic shown here), and the way in which former Debenhams (and other department stores) across the country are being repurposed for a range of uses.
We also discussed the so-called “death of the high street”, where I made the point that I often do:
“I don’t like this whole “death of the high street” thing because I think if you tell people in the newspapers, on TV, on the radio, how awful everything is, it actually stops them discovering all the good stuff that’s happening.
“Certainly, in all the places that I work, I’m always coming across new independent businesses opening, people who have had an epiphany during Covid and said “I’m going to start my own business and I want to do this in my local town”, and there’s loads of that going on.“The danger is that if we focus too much around all the “death of the high street” stuff it actually hides all these positive stories that are going on too.
“So my job is to try and support and champion these independents, and hopefully encourage more of them on our high streets.”
In Taunton’s case, plans to demolish the handsome but unlisted Debenhams building were withdrawn last year, and more recently a Somerset-based design team put forward speculative plans to reinvent the property as “Apartment Store”, where it would function as “a circular economy hub”.
I am pleased to pop up quite regularly on BBC Radio Somerset about high street and retail topics, drawing from my experience of working across the county – including Taunton – as part of the delivery team for the Somerset Visitor Economy Support Programme (VESP) between 2020 and 2022.
