O/t town centre

[gm_gm]

Rotherham and Barnsley have decided to go two distinctly differing routes with regards regenerating and rejuvenating their towns. Neither is right or wrong.

Barnsley has decided that it will focus on retail and leisure, but the retail is more around a market, independent trader offering.

Rotherham has decided, rightly for us in my opinion, that the centre will never again be a retail magnet. The proximity of meadowhall sees to that.

After years of "blaming" Sheffield for its demise, Rotherham is now seeking to emulate what salford did in relation to manchester. The aim is for people to live in the town, use the town for leisure purposes but commute into Sheffield for employment. The tram train is a start on this. The council will start to badge parkgate as the towns retail quarter. The town centre will, so the plan goes, start to include much more housing (apartments), bars, restaurants, cinema but very little by way of retail.

It worked in salford, as soon as salford stopped seeing manchester as the nemesis and started actually using manchester as a reason to be in salford (due to transport links, etc) then the city absolutely boomed.

Will it work in Rotherham? God knows. But I do believe its the only way to go.

Hardly new or innovative as this has been championed for over 12 years now after planning changes, the issue has been the speed at5 which councils work to implement the new rules. New legislation on its way to help accelerate conversions from empty shop to homes

[gkotw]

Nobody said it was a new or innovative plan, in fact I think I pointed out that salford adopted this some years ago. What is relatively new is Rotherham deciding to adopt this plan as their local development framework.