There is a French Market today on the Market Place. It is a different organisation and bigger than the market that came last year.
Glorious sunshine is predicted all weekend.
Not only is the Market in town
but also the Craft Fair in the Old Abbey Buildings.
In January 2010 the district council consulted on options for the Abbey Shopping Centre.
It was announced today that an agreement has been signed for a £53M redevelopment of the favoured option. According to the district council’s press release…
Proposals for the Charter area (starting around 2013) include:
* a new large supermarket
* a new decked car park of about 400 spaces
* other retail floor space
* a replacement library, day centre and medical centre potentially at first floor level.
Proposals for the Abbey Shopping Centre (starting around Jan 2012) include:
* improving the choice and range of shop unit sizes by converting and combining some of the existing units into larger stores
* creating a new unit of 4,500 sq.ft. and another one of 2,000 sq.ft, both with first floor sales areas
* creating a more attractive street area by alternating roof heights and removing the existing canopies
* repaving and replacing street furniture, lighting and signage in the shopping centre.
This comes hot on the heals of an agreement to double the size of the Orchard Centre in Didcot at a cost of £125M. The two district councils involved (Vale of White Horse for Abingdon and South Oxfordshire for Didcot) have shared executive staff so they must have been busy.
The final post appeared on the action4abingdon forum 3 days ago saying “… As you know we created the forum as a vehicle to lobby for improvements to the then newly implemented Abits scheme. This, along with our 250 business signature petition and the Independent Traffic Report resulted in no less than 12 significant changes to the layout.
The forum soon became a good platform for all things Abingdon and has had some lively debates on various subjects, however, nothing lasts forever and so I think it’s time to wind the thing up…”
Needless to say there are still challenges facing Abingdon. But the forum showed that many people cared passionately for the town from various political, and non-political persuasions.