Those of you who do travel to accy to shop, why do you ?
To support those unique shops you need more than the towns footfall to sustain them. There isn't enough trade to keep them open cos as entwisi says they have to charge more, they can't buy in bulk. You need tourism, you need to use what you've got around the area, you need quirks like space ships, and a good canal with good facilities to attract people. There's already loads up there it just needs putting together and then a town regeneration plan putting into place to get a touristy type element to the shops, to attract them in from other attractions. To do it though you need an active group and the help of the council.
You could do with a town development forum, look in to development trusts. whatever group you have at the moment clearly isn't doing anything from the comments on here.
What does suprise me is that we have all of those small shops here, bookshops, cafe's, antiques, gift shops, a farm shop selling fresh pasties, pies, sausage rolls, we have a traditional butcher that makes sausage on the premises and sells local cuts of meat.
We've got no high street shops though other than a newsagents. we're far too small with 12000 population. Atherstone is very old and has many listed buildings, it also has many attractions in the area. I believe that coupled with it's booktown project makes it the ideal place to be a central tourist town.
