Reader letter: What's next for The Ridings?

But it seems to me to be a fairly straightforward matter. The Ridings was built at a time when shopping centres of that style were the up-and-coming thing and it was hugely successful, with high rents and massive foot-fall to support them. That is no longer the case. At least two of the key anchor tenants are about to abandon ship (M&S and Primark), with the remaining two (Morrisons and Boots) looking enviously at the lifeboats. It’s only a question of time before they both make a dash for them and sail away to the comparative comfort of a nearby retail park. The owners of the property, which you couldn’t have bought for a gold pig at one time, are now the Wakefield population in the shape of Wakefield MDC. As we stand the council has no demonstrable experience of running a sizeable retail outlet and I know that it was never their intention to do so in anything but the short term. The Ridings requires significant repair were it to remain in operation and that money will need to be recovered from retailers. The Ridings simply doesn’t have the traffic to attract any major High Street operation back to its doors, which it would need to do to make it viable. Wakefield’s other problem is that it is caught in the economic gravitational pull of Leeds, which is ten minutes away by train. Wakefield cannot even begin to compete with Leeds or the White Rose Centre for range or premium higher end goods. In short, the Ridings needs to be pulled down, as is happening to similar sites in similar sized towns and cities all over the UK. We can’t be emotive about this. Some of us wish the Mecca and The Mitre were still standing but we accepted it when they went. The thing with revolutions is that they keep coming around and this is another one, 45 years later. Those who seem intent on keeping The Ridings can’t tell you how it will become financially viable. If they could then the council wouldn’t have found themselves buying it, they would have been outbid by private businesses.