It's - The Vine

There they were today, Sunday afternoon, Dave, Chris, Pat, family and friends, putting on the second coat of paint in The Vine. The energy and determination were great to see. Opening ceremony at 10.00 a.m. next Wednesday 3rd November. It's all looking good for a very successful venture, and one that deserves strong and steady support.

End of Stokes, but the start of Chris and Dave's fruit and veg shop

What a great town! Dave and Chris and all the gang have been overwhelmed by all the support, sympathy and affection they have had from everyone. You reap what you sow in this life, and they have reaped this return on their great contribution to the town over the years. So Stokes is gone, but Dave and Chris look as if they have been successful in sorting out the lease and necessary backing, with help from the Chamber of Commerce and others of you with specialist knowledge. They hope to re-open next week, perhaps as early as Tuesday. We'll keep you posted, and when they do open make sure you congratulate them, strip the shelves, and remain loyal customers.

Partial Success

We are pleased to report that some key components seem to be falling off the Council/superstore bulldozer, in that the Strategic Planning Committee today deferred a decision on the out-of-town Wadebridge developments as they need "more information". A suspicious observer might point out that they do have a lot of information already, especially about the fatal effect of a 30% drop in custom for our everyday town centre shops, and could today have made a well-informed decision to refuse all three applications. This move does look a little like a tactical retreat in the face not of insufficient information, but of the wrong sort of information. But we must be optimistic about the probity of the process, and today's result is better than the intended one - approval of Sainsbury's and Tesco. You can be sure that we too will be offering further useful information ourselves to help things along.

Nowhere to hide!

The supermarket sites appear to have been deliberately located on high ground to maximize visual impact – the Sainsbury's store would be over 13m high, or equivalent to a 5 storey building.  It is felt that the visual impact alone would be unacceptable – there would not be many places in the town that you would not be able to see at least one of the stores from, especially at night as they tend to use a lot of outside lighting.  Planned tree lines stop short of the store frontages to ensure high visual impact (Mark Innes).

Danger to pedestrians

Traffic will increase considerably on Bodieve road if the football practise pitches are moved there. Particularly the danger to pedestrians using the very narrow footpath is an accident waiting to happen without encouraging many hundreds of youngsters to use it (Fiona Clark).  

I don't want to be based in another faceless town

Two-thirds of the allocated land will be carparking only - not making the most of good employment space. Apparently the three biggest employers in Wadebridge could fit into this carparking land, so there's a huge waste there.
Also, there's a huge opportunity cost of the type of jobs available - around 70% of the supermarket jobs are part time, minimum wage jobs. This doesn't compare to skilled jobs that have the potential to pay mortgages, boost the local economy etc. It's also likely that self checkouts will be introduced, which will cut out even more jobs. Another huge issue is the net job loss in the area, due to shops shutting, less trade so less need to hire staff etc.

Lastly, the effect that the supermarket will undoubtedly have on the community means that people may not want to stay or move to Wadebridge. Personally, I'm looking to buy a house in this area but I'm waiting to see the results of the supermarket issue, as I don't want to be based in another faceless town - I may as well be in a city that offers better job opportunities, as the reasons why I'm choosing to live in Wadebridge (lively community, great shops, quality of life, rural area etc) will be jeopardized (Harriet Henderson).

Bring real, mortgage compatible jobs

By approving the plans for supermarkets the planners would be responsible for the destruction of Wadebridge town centre. They would be sacrificing the Town of Wadebridge to pay for the mismanagement of the County's finances.

If the council were serious about the creation of jobs in the region they should insist that the company concerned should re-locate their IT department or marketing to bring real, mortgage compatible jobs to the region.

If the Sainsburys application were to be accepted Trenant Vale would have to be closed as it would be a dangerous Rat Run. It is very narrow, without any footpath and is a walking route for the school children and parents going up to the school. Any disturbance to the traffic flow on the Bodmin Road and Gonvena Hill instantly builds traffic flow to untenable levels.  A traffic monitor was placed on the Vale in school holidays after 12.00 pm on a Saturday and removed within hours. It is suspected that this could be used to tick an 'OK' box to indicate all is well! The residents will watch this space! (John Fitzpatrick-Ellis).