A ONCE-LOVED shopping centre that was visited by King Charles and other celebs has been dubbed the “worst” in Britain.
With only a single Sports Direct store holding down the fort, the once bustling shopping centre, built with taxpayers money, is now a Welsh “ghost town.”
A Welsh shopping centre has been branded the ‘worst’ in the UK[/caption]
The Festival Park, Gwent, once drew in 2million people including a slew of A-listers[/caption]
Shop owners were left bitterly disappointed after the once-loved centre closed[/caption]
The National Garden Festival ran from May until October 1992 and attracted more than two million people, with the site later used for a popular shopping centre.
However 40 independent traders have since moved out of the outlet in Ebbw Vale, Gwent, since its highly anticipated opening, much to the dismay of shoppers.
Shop owner Kim Maguire moved out of the festival park – even though her John Jenkins gift shop was one of the original stores on the site.
But she said she was “bitterly disappointed” – and moved her store into the town centre high street more than a year ago.
She said: “I still regularly hear from customers about how much they miss Festival Park though, and how shocked they all are at what has happened to it over the last few years.
“It still feels quite surreal to be honest, even now a year down the line.
“It was a sad day when it closed for me as a business and for the community as a whole.
“Everyone who worked there misses it as well, though we are now in a larger shop further towards the centre of town.”
The thriving shopper hotspot boasted a range of popular brands including Nike, M&S, Costa, and Gap.
It peaked in the 90s with Prince Charles, Dannii Minogue and Catherine Zeta-Jones turning up to celebrate its opening, but now hardly a soul goes there.
Originally a steel mill, the site was given heavy public investment to transform it into the immensely popular Garden Festival.
With fairground rides, attractions, plant exhibits, it drew in millions of visitors but unfortunately, like many high-streets, popularity dropped.
Kelvin Morgan, who once ran a fresh fruit and veg shop on Festival Park, also said he had been desperately sad to see the site’s decline after leaving almost a year ago himself.
“It used to be so beautiful over there with all the flower gardens and shops so to see it as it is now is very sad,” he said.
“I even remember the excitement when it opened as the Garden Festival, and you used to have hundreds of people over there when it first changed to a shopping centre after that.
“Now, with all the shops closed apart from one, and with absolutely no clarification about what’s happening in the future we just assume it’s done with, and that’s that.
“It’s a complete ghost town at the moment, though I think it would still be a shame for people here to see it gone.”
Once the retail dream was hit by a slump in footfall, it was sold for just £1 to Birmingham-based owners in 2021, Mercia Real Estate Ltd.
The privately-owned asset management firm turned the 70-acre unoccupied site into an industrial park.
Last year it was granted permission to give the iconic centre a much-needed revamp.
At the time it closed shopper Megan Woods, 59, said: “It was amazing then – long queues to get in and a real buzz.
“It has its own fairground and even a talking moving clock. But now it is more like a zombie-land with no one here.
“Something has gone very wrong somewhere that all that investment of taxpayers money was wasted. It was getting bad before the pandemic but now it is just ridiculous.”
Some locals blamed a lack of investment and planning by the Labour-run Blaenau Gwent Council for the decline – and others a lack of private investment.
Despite shoppers being disappointed that their beloved centre has vanished, there are plans for new businesses to pop up.
The landlord has supposedly remodelled the site, dismantling specific units to create more yard space, parking, roads, and paths.
There are also plans for a gym and a nursery for the occupiers of the units and residents in the area.
Samuel Clark, chief executive officer of Mercia Real Estate, said: “We are confident that the much-needed redevelopment of Festival Park will be an attractive proposition to new and existing businesses, and will provide a range of unit sizes to enable successful small businesses to expand over time without ever needing to leave the site to find larger premises.”
Neil Francis, head of Knight Frank’s industrial and logistics division in Wales, said: “The imaginative redevelopment of the Festival Park site, coupled with a willingness by the owners to be able to agree leases within a matter of weeks, will be an attractive proposition to local and national businesses.”
TROUBLE ON THE HIGH STREET
Plenty of other retailers are closing stores across the high street as households lean more towards online shopping and amid high business rates.
Soaring inflation in recent years has also dented shoppers’ pockets.
The Centre for Retail Research’s latest analysis suggests 13,479 stores, the equivalent of 37 each day, shut for good in 2024.
Of those, 11,341 were independent shops while 2,138 were shut by larger retailers.
The data also showed over half the stores that closed last year were shut due to the store or retailer going through insolvency proceedings.
This is when formal measures are taken to deal with tackling a business‘s debt.
Why are retailers closing stores?
Retailers have been feeling the squeeze since the pandemic, while shoppers are cutting back on spending due to the soaring cost of living crisis.
High energy costs and a move to shopping online after the pandemic are also taking a toll, and many high street shops have struggled to keep going.
However, additional costs have added further pain to an already struggling sector.
The British Retail Consortium has predicted that the Treasury’s hike to employer NICs from April will cost the retail sector £2.3billion.
At the same time, the minimum wage will rise to £12.21 an hour from April, and the minimum wage for people aged 18-20 will rise to £10 an hour, an increase of £1.40.
The Centre for Retail Research (CRR) has also warned that around 17,350 retail sites are expected to shut down this year.
It comes on the back of a tough 2024 when 13,000 shops closed their doors for good, already a 28% increase on the previous year.
Professor Joshua Bamfield, director of the CRR said: “The results for 2024 show that although the outcomes for store closures overall were not as poor as in either 2020 or 2022, they are still disconcerting, with worse set to come in 2025.”
It comes after almost 170,000 retail workers lost their jobs in 2024.
End-of-year figures compiled by the Centre for Retail Research showed the number of job losses spiked amid the collapse of major chains such as Homebase and Ted Baker.
It said its latest analysis showed that a total of 169,395 retail jobs were lost in the 2024 calendar year to date.
This was up 49,990 – an increase of 41.9% – compared with 2023.
It is the highest annual reading since more than 200,000 jobs were lost in 2020 in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced retailers to shut their stores during lockdowns.
The centre said 38 major retailers went into administration in 2024, including household names such as Lloyds Pharmacy, Homebase, The Body Shop, Carpetright and Ted Baker.
Around a third of all retail job losses in 2024, 33% or 55,914 in total, resulted from administrations.
Experts have said small high street shops could face a particularly challenging 2025 because of Budget tax and wage changes.
Professor Bamfield has warned of a bleak outlook for 2025, predicting that as many as 202,000 jobs could be lost in the sector.
“By increasing both the costs of running stores and the costs on each consumer’s household it is highly likely that we will see retail job losses eclipse the height of the pandemic in 2020.”
The former festival site attracted the likes of Prince Charles, Dannii Minogue and Catherine Zeta Jones[/caption]
It boasted rides, attractions and plant exhibitions before footfall declined[/caption]
Since it’s closure the centre has stood as an empty industrial park[/caption]
