Coming soon will be new flats where Withy King once were in West St Helen Street. They have moved to the corner of the Vineyard and Stert Street.
Nearby Eben Lark opened a couple of weeks ago.
At the top of the road Efes Turkish Barber are also Opening Soon.
The newspapers in the window are from a time when low initial expectations had turned to hope.
Hope was dashed and now we must wait another 4 years for the dream of World Cup Glory …
The Abingdon Exchange (selling 2nd hand DVDs and CDs) did close and reopen and then closed again so I’m not sure what is planned next.
William Hill have opened in the former newsagents / convenience store two doors up from there.
Greggs have been closed for a week having a refit and are open again today. Vodafone should soon follow.
Breckon and Breckon also opened a week or so ago Selling and Letting properties.
It is a lovely morning: Mayors Day today, as well as the Trinity Fair and St Edmund’s School Fete. So plenty to help forget the football..
I went in the Exchange shop in Wantage, as they have one there. It was really good, a great addition to the high street. Apparently the landlord of the Abingdon shop put the rent up so they had to pull out. Shame.
Wouldn’t it be nice to see some Abingdon shops using the traditional canvas canopies that pull out ….. 😉
Re ‘The Abingdon Exchange’; can any business people or comercial property OWNERS explain to us laypersons why having a ‘let’ shop, at lower rent be worse than having a vacant premesis?
Surely…if the rent is low….the shop might thrive. If the shops thrive, the town thrives. If the town thrives, the shops thrive. If the shops and town thrive, then there’s room to renegotiate the rent….
Is it just greed? Is it poor business accumen? Is it short sightedness? Is it lack of cohesive thinking and common goal between all concerned (councils, owners, CoC, ChAPS etc)?
Or…if I were a commercial property owner I’d soon learn why an empty shop is better than a let one?
Happy to be educated on this one…
daniel, large companies borrow money to buy property and then put it on the market at an absurdly high rent. This high rent increases the value of the property and thus their portfolio so they can borrow even more money to buy even more property.
If they lower the rent to a price where a shopkeeper can make a profit, that means their property is less valuable so they can only borrow less money!
Spot on Peter – thats my understanding too
Apparently this particular landlord has on of the highest levels of vacant commercial properties across the UK. Its nothing to do with the council its a private enterprise. They must be able to offset any loss they make on having a vacant property through achieving higher revenues elsewhere.
wasnt the abingdon exchange, in the shop that had the thai supermarket in before?
And when that closed, there were signs saying it was rent free for a short period ?
hence the rent went up at the end of that ‘period’ ( probably after the date that the supermarket had paid for ), rather than from some dastardly plan by the landlord…
you might be right, Keith, either way they seem to be making a decent go of it over Wantage, would have thought they could do here.
Thanks for the explanation.
I hold out hope that some of the best thinkers in the relevant positions of power are booked on to away days, team working trips and numerous courses in an effort to some how, someway, overcome this travesty that has seemingly besieged our highstreets, and is clearly at least partly and significantly responsible for its demise.
I have ideas myself…but appreciate I may not charge enough for them…so I’ll keep shtuum and let the experts wrestle with it over their lunch, on expenses.
New Vodafone store opens Friday 11 July
Apparently that date still has a bit of risk around it so may be subject to change