Sadly, after 50 years in Clifftonville's Northdown Road, The Albion Bookshop is closing at the end of this week. A notice in the window talks of harsh economic reality ( Westwood Cross?). Does anyone know if The Albion Bookshop in Broadstairs is still there?
The closure of EDF Greengrocers in Northdown Road, Clifftonville has now taken place and there is no longer a specialist greengrocers anywhere on Northdown Road. EDF has moved to Nash Farm at Westwood! If you can't beat them, join them?The reality is that the pace of shop closures is now accelerating in our main town shopping areas with TDC doing its best to push this along with 30minutes parking in Northdown Road now costing 50p as opposed to 30p. A 67% increase is unjustified and really shows how much support our Council has for the traditional shopping centres that are struggling to survive!
Does anyone have further details of shop closures in the past two weeks since Easter?
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12 comments:
You might be a little previous with the closure of Albion Bookshops. One of their assistants told me a few days ago they had to sell all the books first - or as many as they could.
Both C'ville and Broadstairs shops will be going and while there is no definite time frame, my spy told me both shops 'would be gone by the summer'.
Very sad all the same. They blame the supermarkets for the downturn - 'We can't beat £8 for Delia's latest book in Tescos,' is what I was told.
Symptomatic of our times. Publishers of local books will have two fewer outlets through which to sell their wares - so it's bad news for seller as well as buyers.
Nick
Amazon.
Market Forces
No such thing as society.
Now simmer in it. Ha ha ha.
We used to use the Broadstairs Albion Bookshop regularly until they badly let us down over an essential book order. There is, sadly, no way these independents can compete with online booksellers or shops like Waterstone's with their 3 for 2 offers. Rightly or wrongly, it's called progress or the cold hard facts of economic life. There's no such thing as customer loyalty where money is concerned. Books are, for the retailer like Waterstone's, no different to cans of baked beans.
50p for a half hour to park in Broadstairs and this from a Tory council. I thought the Tory Party was the party of business, especially small business.
One would think so , as 'Our Leader'was and is still in the carpet trade operating out of Northdown Carpets in Northdown Road?
"The Lord helps those who help themselves".
Parking cost going up in all our town centres. How much do the Council charge for parking at Westwood Cross? NOTHING think that say everything about this Council and our Local town centres.
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=6152
Albion Bookshop in Broadstairs has a 'closing down sale' sign in the window this morning.
Not to worry we will get a state subsidised bookshop in Turner K9 and if my suspicions about the viability of Waterstones and Smiths at WC are correct we may well wind up with it being the only new bookshop in Thanet. (Mine is mostly secondhand apart from local history)
Hang on in there, Michael!
Bertie I am, but what will get me in the end is the combined attitude of national and local government to planning. While the shop landlords know that they can easily get planning permission to convert the shop buildings to residential use, when the leases come up for renewal the rents reflect the rent that would be obtained from residential occupation and not the profit than can be obtained from a shop in the building. Oddly enough I am doing quite well at the moment but not as well as I was in 1988 when the building was worth about £30,000 and a fair rent 10% of this was about £3,000 per annum. Now the building is worth about £300,000 and converted into apartments would generate in excess of £30,000 per annum. I expect my turnover this year to be about £50,000 and very much doubt that any other sort of shop on this site would do much better. My brother closed his bookshop in St Albans and my father his in Wimborne Minster both in the last year and both for this reason.
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