What a pompous letter.
Does John R Brown truly believe that people who pay huge amounts of money on surveys, architectural designs, consultations etc etc would bother if they did not consider that they were going to profit from it? This is nothing to do with taxpayers money, that is just what our elected members spend for us (and themselves maybe!).

If everyone shops online why are the suprmarkets packed with shoppers?

Major restaurants can sell you anything you want?
Only if you want a burger John.

[Tourism is one of the ways ahead and people will not come to see new department stores in a medieval town.]

All of the UK existed in the mediaeval period, it is and was just one part of our long history.
Like many other towns (in Europe too) we have an interesting legacy of buildings and some original street planning but that hasn’t stopped us building roads for cars and buses or tracks for trams or trains which didn’t exist then.
Towns are a succession of evolutionary change which adapts to the desires and needs of it’s citizens.
The road put through by Telford destroyed a large part of the original Abbey but many people benefitted from the change. The trains ran right up to the Abbey destroying the ambience and almost the building itself with a bad accident. Many people loathed the belching monsters cutting up their countryside with noise and filth but the benefits of long distance faster travel outweighed those dissenters who opposed any change.

Of course modern and mediaeval can succeed together. Businesses have moved out of the town because older buildings are not designed for modern technology and are often impractical, dark and do not meet the H&S requirements we expect today.

To attract people to the town we need popular stores,an attractive riverside not dominated by cars, buildings that offer masses of light, fantastic views, great facilities alongside the attractive and genuine protected historical legacy that Shrewsbury is quite fortunate to retain.

You refer to small high tech industry which is exactly what Telford attracts.

There will be a large expansion of Shrewsbury with a lot of new housing in the next few decades so it is important that we try to make the town realise it’s assets instead of sitting on a dusty shelf saying I am already so great you must not touch me!

It is sad that decisions made in the past over having a university and then over the disney like shopping malls followed by the wrongly placed theatre were poorly made. It begs the question that the system of politically affiliated councillors who dominate where our money gets spent is not flawed. These very important decisions should be made by more expert, professional and business experienced individuals, particlarly in small towns where parochialism does no favours these days.

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‘What we do need are new small high-tech industries in the town and area, creating jobs for Shrewsbury people.’

Maybe if we had a semi-decent broadband infrastructure, high-tech companies would base themselves in Shrewsbury.

Check out Shrewsbury/Shropshire on this map

http://maps.ofcom.org.uk/broadband/

Telford is like a broadband oasis in the middle.

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keep wasting money on a town thats dying on its knees. keep building another ugly modern building to ruin a medieval town. soon be called new shrewsbury built in the 21st century lol.

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Compared to other towns Shrewsbury is not doing that badly and to imagine that any town could present it’s entirety as a museum piece is laughable, mark.

London is steeped in mediaeval history but is also a city of the 21st century.
To survive Shrewsbury cannot sit on it’s laurels it has to compete and surprise surprise it isn’t the only town in the UK to have attractive old buildings but it only has a handful of post millennium buildings of any quality.

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New shopping centres are being built all over the place so people can’t be buying everything online. Shrewsbury has a lot going for it because it has so many independent shops that you don’t get in Telford or Birmingham. The only thing we lack is some of the big name department stores. The “why build a new shopping centre when there are empty shops now” is a silly argument because Debenhams can’t move into the old Briggs shoe shop! The point of a centre like this is that you attract the big department stores.

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