Supermarket chain Aldi has opened its new store in Caerphilly town.
The new shop, located on Gallagher Retail Park, at Crossways, opened on Thursday, October 29.
Standing at 1,254sqm, the store has 107 car parking spaces and has created 37 new jobs.
The opening is a return to Caerphilly for the German discount retailer. It had originally built and opened a store on Bedwas Road in 2007, before closing unexpectedly in 2010.
The building is now home to B&M Bargains.
Aldi also opened a new store in Blackwood last month.
A very welcome return but there must be a limit to the number of supermarkets that a town can support. Who is going to drop out eventually leaving yet another large empty building?
Normally I would agree with you as regards your empty building point but in this case it was brown land. Should there ever be an upsurge in the economy, it and those vast retail units opposite won’t be empty for long.
Of course that depends on if we ever do get an upsurge in the retail sector of the economy which isn’t likely anytime soon.
Your point about the glut of supermarkets is spot on but in this case it has been one out and one in even if the impact on our town centre has been less than desirable.
It’s the impact on town centres that I find the most distressing.
Every town centre should have a viable market with individually owned stalls to give it a focal point and to suit our times its also essential to have a car park close by and trolleys.
This convenient arrangement is why supermarkets became popular in the first place as anyone old enough to remember the days when shopping meant carrying heavy bags from one shop to the next.
When visiting countries on the continent this is one of the major atractions.
Couldn’t agree more. Unfortunately this isn’t the case anymore and I have no idea if or how it could be brought back. We are married to our cars now, much of the Anglosphere is the same. But towns and cities don’t accommodate cars very well, taking Cardiff as an example. Access to the major car parks is ok…..ish, but the parks themselves are expensive and neither of the two main streets are accessible by car. I’ve been to the indoor market in Caerphilly twice since it reopened and there is nothing there I would buy.
I have only walked over to the top of town a handful of times since Tesco shut, I now use the bottom of town because Morrisons is there.
What to do?
The butcher, Mick, is quite good also the phone people do good phone cases, etc. Apart from that I agree that there is not a good environment. What killed it is the removal of all the proper indoor market stalls to make way for a skate park that never happened, I refer to this in another comment.
I feel sorry for the hard working people who are trying to make a living in the market today. It was so much better years ago, we are going backwards, not progressing.
As heart breaking as it most definitely is, one of the best options for the Plymouth buildings would probably be demolition. Yes I know it’s an awful prospect and not one I would want but it is probably the most viable one, financially and realistically speaking. Caerphilly has lost most of its old buildings and the new ones at the bottom of town seem to work.
Personally I would rather live in hay on Wye than Milton Keynes but Caerphilly has to be realistic.
You may recall that there was a plan to demolish and rebuild, in about 2009 I think. The planned buildings were simply awful and there was little support for the idea.
There does not seem to be the money available to construct anything commercial that is of a quality we could be proud of. This is nothing new, Mr. Griffen, the builder of the current market, had a vision for high grade development of this part of the town. The roadblock to this was finance, that was back in the 1930’s. Nothing seems to have changed.
Yeah I do remember the proposed development, money money money I’m afraid.
If the Plymouth hotel were returned to former glory with rooftop gardens and accommodation and restaurant and etc etc etc.
Got to face facts unfortunately, as Caerphilly stands it would be a leap of extraordinary faith for an investor unless there were some serious subs on the table.