Hats off to Lincolnshire Co-op and its new shopping centre in Holbeach – bright, sunny, smart and appealing.
With the Post Office, pharmacy and library all accessed through the same portal there’s a nice bustle to the place yet plenty of space. Even upholstered seats around a table in the window—to sample your library book, wait for your prescription.
The library is trimmed down, but what did we expect with novels four for a pound in some charity shops and all the non-fiction data a fingertip away on the web. Five Internet stations in the library as well.
Parking for ten cars (four disability bays) right on the doorstep, very handy for a quick shop in the convenience store with its cash machine secluded at the back.
This is all such a marvellous break from slogging round the supermarket. A glimpse of brighter things to come, and new life for this side of the town.
It’s left a few gaps in the High Street – especially with The Chequers shut down, the takeaway gone from next door as well as the pub along the pavement (all looking wrecks), two more banks closed, and the outlets mentioned moved into the new centre. But let’s hope the same sort of imagination can be applied in these places.
Charity shops are not necessarily the death of a high street, they’ve made themselves part of its future – popular haunts with local merchandise up for sale at knockdown prices for charity – what’s wrong with that?
But the Co-op’s new centre sets a benchmark. It’s a pleasure to step inside it. Everything looks better on a sunny day. The new experience is uplifting.
Now let’s put the market back where it belongs, by the parish church, ditch these idiotic schemes for Boston Road car park and let the safe and sensible cut-through resume to relieve the lengthening toxic queues at the traffic lights. (Poisonous diesel fumes banned in cities around the world.) And let’s keep Holbeach moving.
The Co-op has made a fine start. Progress at last. The High Street hits back!
Cliff Foster
Edinburgh Walk
Holbeach
