Buxton's Failing Shopping Centre And It's Future

Hello and welcome to episode 26 of Buxton Barrow Man my volunteering series!
In this episode, I talk about the past and future of the Springs shopping centre in Buxton.
Shot on: GoPro Hero11
Pictures / Video (Please message if you are the owner of such):
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Music:
Expand / Dreamer by Hazy
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[@dstirl]

Excellent video, Leo. Really helped me make sense of what the Council is planning. Just hope it eventually sees the light of day.

[@paulwilks6129]

Excellent video, thanks very much for the effort put into researching and producing.

[@Ckearpf]

Tbf, Elvis rocking back up to Buxton to do a final gig would be more believable than the council doing a job properly. Here's hoping though lmao

[@IlfordRetro]

I enjoyed this video Leo. I'm a first-time viewer of your channel and have never visited Buxton but even I'm excited by the plans for your town centre's redevelopment! Opening up the Wye is a good idea and hopefully 'potential' for businesses alongside the river actually becomes a reality. I don't see why favourable rents to get businesses up and running couldn't come to fruition either because it would help (our towns) immensely. One thing the indoor shopping centre here in Ilford is doing is converting much of the top floor space to an NHS clinic. Unthinkable in 1991 when it was opened, but a necessity to keep things alive and mix the use of such buildings to prevent further decay. Great video and well explained, plus the litter collection must be very satisfying. Rod.

[@Leock]

That’s rather interesting, the council here wants to build a new medical centre so they can centralise all the little ones we have. Instead of building something new utilising the top floor of the Springs is a pretty good idea. Thank you very much for watching and commenting :)

[@tango6nf477]

Hi Leo. Its a tragedy that what has happened in Buxton is repeated in every town and city in the country. Thousands of historic buildings have been mindlessly demolished in the name of "progress" destroying our history and creating concrete ugliness. More beautiful buildings and environments have been destroyed since the war than during it. Its good that Buxton Council are trying to do something about it and I wish them success. It would also help if people didn't do so much shopping in out of town centres and on-line shopping but shopped locally, thereby preventing shop closures. Buxton could be really beautiful, but it needs help and sadly cash but there's not much of that around at the moment.

[@Leock]

It is a shame that our historic buildings need rebuilding but the results of the new facade work is amazing particularly on Pondon Home. I am certainly seeing the high street get busier in the past year so let’s hope this is a continuing trend.

[@keithclark5852]

Thank you Leo, a really interesting film. I was tourist officer for Buxton and High Peak in the 1970’s and moved to Carlisle in 1981. We had an identical exoerience, new shopping centre in the 1980’s now declining with its anchor store Debenhams closed and other stores struggling. British town centres are undergoing a massive change, it’s a challenge but it is change or die so I hope Buxton makes it, I had some happy and occasionally exciting times there.

[@Leock]

Thanks for watching! I’m sure a lot of towns across Britain are facing the same issue. I’m intrigued to see how they all go about doing so.

[@christopher9727]

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[@OllieKabi]

This mixed used centre proposal looks great. Glad to hear all those shop-front works were funded! I got worried some of those shops, like Scrivener's, were suffering.

[@fasthracing]

Interesting video. I lived in Buxton and the surrounding area's for 25 years. (I also went to the High Peak College of Further Education for a year back in 1980 - Happy memories) I can remember Millers cafe and the building of the shopping centre, which as you say was well received back in the day.

[@neilboulton9813]

Well done for the litter picking. Whatever they do to to replace that architectural travesty as an historic town and in line with Bakewell should use the local stone and merge it to be as seamless as possible. As this will generste the most local and tourist visitors.

[@Leock]

I do believe something has been put in place in recent years like Bakewell as the new old folks home by the train station is fairly respectful architecturally alongside the premier inn.

[@user-pf3ye6yi9n]

So they are going to replace a failing shopping centre with... another shopping centre. (The other stuff is just window dressing, it's another shopping centre). At least it's on the same site, the usual practice is to build another one next to it and wonder why the remaining shops move out of the old one. Some councils are on iteration 3 or 4 of this process. There is a natural size of any particular place based on the catchment and you can't change that by building more shops. The best use of the land would be as a free car park for the town centre which would actually help the shops to thrive but that is heresy these days.

[@samjl4]

Knock it down, uncover the river as far as possible towards the viaduct, linear green space for wildlife and natural flood event landscaping down either side of the river, reduce the amount of concrete/car parking and replace with grass and trees and condense it into a two storey car park On a smaller footprint like at pavilion gardens with access out onto station road, build a Victorian style covered shopping street like in Bakewell or what getliffes yard in leek looks like, the shopping village at rowsley could be another inspiration for the ‘look’, re-site waitrose into the old winster palace (where track+ trail was), turn the grove hotel back into a hotel with the ground floor pub reinstated, they’ve already given permission for this for flats which is limits their master plan options so makes no sense, tell mc-asbo to fuck off, it’ll only ruin the town (as a hobby litter picker you know exactly what’s going to happen once that’s up and running, ideally the old Aldi site is where waitrose should be or the site should’ve been given to peak rail for their uses or turned into extra car park space for visitors to make it easier to change the shopping centre car park layout, but that battles over) ditch the ‘health hub’ and invest and redevelop the cavendish hospital site on Manchester road, it’s a crumbling 60s building anyway. The health hub is just a Trojan horse to flog off the evenly distributed nhs assets throughout buxton/Fairfield/harbour hill to developers. Turf out the Turkish barbers and dodgy news agents that seem to be growing like weeds, pay the damn money for the museum to get fixed, convert as many upstairs units as possible into apartments for young families. Rebuild/restore. the toilets at the bus station by the co-op. Jobs a good-un. Oh and don’t knock down what’s left of the midland station fanlight window, restore it so people can see the symmetry with Paxton’s twin stations, it would be an interesting curiosity.

[@samjl4]

Also not in favour of the apartments all down station approach, looks too like far too much, and the quality of modern construction even with a poor ‘heritage’ vs the quality of the quadrant buildings will stick out like a sore thumb, back in the 90s/early 2000s growing up here it was clear that the place was just somewhere for retirees to move to, it isn’t them buying up every new apartment and new-build, it’s southerners, immigrants and escape to the country types, even though every housing development is given permission to address ‘local demand’ yet they make no effort to ringfence any of it for locals, one of the few recent developments that is high quality/gentle density and I’ve liked is the otter controls one. It’s important to remember that buxton is surrounded by the national park but not in it, due to the quarries, developers know that which is why they’re so desperate to build here.

[@islaws4589]

That sounds really positive!

[@keithpalmer9745]

A successful shopping centre needs shoppers in sufficient numbers to cover today's rents and rates. Buxton being not a big town has to attract shoppers ( who bring in the money } from the outer rural areas and they cannot all come by bus. I like Buxton : it's a comfortable place compared to some towns but to keep the customers coming they need to remember that reasonable access by car is a must or they will go elsewhere. If I read it correctly , the council plan to buy the shopping centre but this guarantees nothing. See John Lewis in Sheffield as an example.

[@Leock]

Very true!

[@andrewmadeup7375]

Living in Buxton we all know station road, the A53 is really busy, with most cars jumping the perdesdrian lights. Do we know what the council plans do do with all the traiffic? Past Morrisons and up Dale road is not a good idea, is it? Looking at the plans the station car park is reduced in size by half and trees are shown on the plan. Where are the comutors going to park? Nice idea to open the river up, but its not really being oppend up is it. Its exposed length is the same just the banks reduces for access to what we allready see as a smell shopping trolly park. If you going to expose it do it in a grander fashion with more river and landscapping. Its a good idea to get rid of the 1980's carbunckle that is the springs shopping center, but is our council up to the job? Really up to the job? I think not.

[@Leock]

I believe there’s enough space for trolleys etc to make there way into the underground car park next to Waitrose, not sure how accessible that might be however. The car parking situation for the train station I believe is to park under the new apartments as that will have a 400+ spaces where currently there’s about 300. Although I very much agree with the question if the council is up to it.

[@ExpoAviation]

I just stumbled upon this video and found it very interesting, I've not been to Buxton for around 20 years now and didn't really get up to much having came by train in order to visit the then existent depot. I think the plans for redevelopment are excellent though I do wonder how much of it will actually go ahead, having seen council projects elsewhere fall ridiculously short after getting their initial go-aheads I reckon that the hotel development will struggle to get through due to bureaucracy (but get through eventually) and only half of what was proposed for the overall site gets done. This would of course be a crying shame and just like all those other projects, falling so far short on the re-development is worse than leaving it "as is". A quick tip for doing "undercover" videos, wear a shirt with a breast pocket then put your phone in there having set it to record video - the phone sits nicely in the pocket and the camera is popping out of the top but not obviously recording ;)

[@Leock]

Yeah I hope it will all go to plan but of course it’s the council so hope is all we’ve got at this stage. Thank you for watching!

[@Mel0dyMusic]

i live in buxton and i work at yorkshire trading wich is where marks and spencers was, just like to say amazing video but bit concerning with these collage appartments it might bring in the wrong crowd such as stupid teenagers or yobbos.

[@Leock]

I certainly understand your concern I’ve lived around Fairfield road all my life so I know the type, it all depends on how it’s priced and who develops the apartment buildings but I believe it won’t be a lease out style development at least.

[@craigmcdonald2110]

A big thank you for picking up the rubbish.

[@Leock]

And thank you for watching :)

[@Ginger_Dalek]

Another project doomed for cutbacks, lack of investment/funding, services not needed and ultimately, failure. I also recall High Street starting at Dale Rd/London Rd/Green Ln/West Rd (AKA Five Ways) junction at the traffic lights and heading north onto the market place, not the Bridge St end of Spring Gardens. Admittedly, it's been a while since I lived there so I'm now wondering what the A515 between Five Ways and the market place is called these days as it would cause confusion having two High Streets in different locations. Then again, having said that, two streets with the same name in different places in the same town would be something High Peak Borough Council would do.

[@Leock]

You are correct that road from five ways is called high street that’s why I tried to specify Springs high street as the Spring Gardens is technically the towns high street however it does not has the road name to reflect that.

[@thebrowns1017]

The plan looks good. I have been shocked at how Buxton town centre has deteriorated over the last few years. My only worry would be sustainability because Buxton town centre seems to be full of people who do not look as if they have much money to spend in the shops along with a fair number of beggars, homeless & crack heads.

[@Leock]

I can say working in Buxton has changed my perspective of the average Joe who shops here and I have been surprised how busy it’s gotten in recent years. Let’s hope if it does go ahead it will encourage investment from brands to keep the street alive.

[@markthomas1291]

Like it...! living in Macclesfield and once working in Buxton and working in The Shopping Centre...I have a better Idea....knock it down and make it into a Car Park..!!!! We not missing anything !! Sonce MandS moved out..Waitrose can stay of course...!! Then at the weekend...make an Open Air Market...That would bring Life back to This Lovely Peak District Town...(capital) Loved the Update...Thanks

[@joinedupjon]

Lets hope it doesn't go the same way as macclesfields town centre redevelopment. (which is to say a council pipe dream that took decades to go nowhere) Though it looks bright and cheerful in the architects pictures I can't help thinking that urban riverside walkways (for instance) can easily end up as unnerving liminal spaces (example of this in macclesfield too)

[@Leock]

I’ve oddly spent quite a while trying to envision the area around the wye as I am a little concerned myself about the new buildings casting shadows and making it a dingy corner so that part of the project really needs a lot of thought before approval.

[@DaysOfDarknessUK]

I am sure you are allowed to video what you like to include in your videos. Other channels do this!

[@MrJoe501]

whats the timeline of this redevelopment?

[@Leock]

The only thing I know about this is that in order for the funds to be revived by the government work must commence before 2030.

[@alzeNL]

Much like why the hell was Hastings Cricket Ground was allowed to be destroyed for a god awful shopping center that sucked the soul out the rest of the town. We know the answer... $

[@kingvader100]

and the nightlife sucks!!!

[@ronniehotdogs5686]

You can film anything in public without permission mate 👍

[@nw8000]

You mean they are not going to build a mosque or a migrant camp on that valuable land!

[@bluemax77]

Show me one example where a UK forward-looking local council has ever had either the ideas or the funding to successfully see a viable project through to fruition.? The country is basically broke, with many town centres pushed into dereliction. Therefore, any available meager funding needs to be channeled into housing the homeless, not revamping an ugly, failed shopping mall into another losing proposition. The nation needs homes, not more pointless shops or overpriced pubs and eateries.

[@Leock]

Well apart of that is the reason behind the regeneration to build more apartments in the centre of Buxton. More property’s on land that is currently a car park will end up providing more income for the council to provide better services. I doubt it will be built to the best the project could be but I do agree on its approval in order to get the ball rolling to improve the town in other ways. Unfortunately this country cannot run without providing investment opportunities first.