Every Time a Perth Shop Closes, Somebody Commissions a Report Into Why Shops Are Closing
A columnist calculates Perth now has more high street strategies than high street shops.
South Street, Perth, in between closures. Photo: David Dixon, “South Street Perth - geograph.org.uk - 2674673”, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
Another long-established shop on South Street is closing after fifty years, and I can predict exactly what happens next, because it has happened every time before.
First, sadness on social media: “Another one gone,” people will say, from home, having last shopped there in 2011. Then a meeting. Then a report into what is happening to the high street. It will cost about a year’s rent on the empty unit and recommend that more people come into town.
The real problems — footfall, a grim lane beside the car park, the long shadow of a nearby fire — need real answers: lighting, cleaning, somewhere you’d walk through without your keys between your fingers. Not another strategy with a smiling woman holding a paper bag on the cover.
So here’s my strategy, free of charge: go into town this week. Buy something. Go back next week. That’s the report. You’re welcome.
The real story: Perth's Proudfoot to close after 50 years, citing footfall and antisocial behaviour (The Courier)
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