Tescopolis in Suffolk

[Nemesis]

Jonathan Glancey

Why do we let the retail leviathans run amok?


Save us from this Tesco terroir
25 April 2008

One must be careful with Tesco. This unsmiling and unstoppable company sues when it’s said to be behaving aggressively. Whatever its behaviour, we all know that, along with rival supermarket chains, Tesco has radically changed the British landscape and life in our towns.

I do not understand why we have allowed these retail leviathans to have so disproportionate impact on our lives, nor why we have allowed them to get away with such banal buildings, let alone all the environmentally costly infrastructure, the packaging, signage, bright lighting and erosion of local character that go hand-in-till with their highly effective business styles. If we must have these things, shouldn’t they be built underground and covered with green roofs? Or else be built as simple sheds in industrial estates or among distribution depots?

No amount of special pleading will make supermarkets physically attractive. Architects, though, like to believe that they can redeem all building types. This is wishful thinking and reminds me of Philip Johnson’s infamous quote: “Architects are pretty much high-class whores. We can turn down projects the way they can turn down some clients, but we’ve both got to say ‘yes’ to someone if we want to stay in business.”

Allies & Morrison’s staff are generally good fellows, so it was odd to hear partner Paul Appleton praising Tesco recently in BD for its decision to employ the practice, among others, to raise the game of dressing up these giant stores — as if a hippopotamus might be invited to dine with the Queen if only it wore a natty suit.

“We think supermarkets are a fascinating typology that can help repair a town centre if a mixed-use approach is taken. Instead of rejecting the context, you assimilate the scheme into the environment,” said Appleton.

Or you just say “no”. In my Suffolk town, Hadleigh, Tesco has submitted a planning application that is simply heartbreaking. The design by Lyons Sleeman Hoare, with its long, impervious barrier walls coloured Suffolk Pink, is patronising and wrong-headed. The beautiful riverside plot is rich in wildlife. Local people dig allotments there, and walk with children and dogs to get away from a supermarket way of life.

I won’t bore you with details of traffic predictions, nor with the sadness and division this application has caused in an unbranded, independent English market town with a workaday character all of its own. Nor must I go on about the fact that the local district council, strangely supportive of a Tesco development on this inappropriate site, meets just across the way in a lovely huddle of buildings, old and new, stitched together by Arup Associates in the 1960s.

“Hadleigh is a fascinating place and we have striven to build something that is worthy of the people that live here”, says Lyons Sleeman Hoare. Striving is not enough. Saying no to this tide of soul-destroying development and proposing new ways of how we might shop ethically and well today is something else altogether.

From Building Design:

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=430&storycode=3112140&c=1

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[Penners]

Jonathan Glancey
In my Suffolk town, Hadleigh, Tesco has submitted a planning application that is simply heartbreaking. The design by Lyons Sleeman Hoare, with its long, impervious barrier walls coloured Suffolk Pink, is patronising and wrong-headed. The beautiful riverside plot is rich in wildlife. Local people dig allotments there, and walk with children and dogs to get away from a supermarket way of life.

Oh hear, hear!

The battle to stop Tesco coming to gorgeous Hadleigh (described by Betjeman as "one of the most perfect towns in England") has been going on for nearly 10 years. It was initially thrown out, but - as is their usual practice - Tesco just kept on plugging away. Now they've got their way.

The design of the store is a bl**dy disgrace, IMO (see below). A roof that looks like oversized curly British Rail sandwiches. Great slabs of walls surmounted by clerestory windows that make the place look like an engineering factory. The "Suffolk Pink" slabs apparently make it blend into the character of the town. Hah! As Jonathan Glancey has said - it's just a patronising joke (except that it's not funny).

Hadleigh already has a modest Co-op supermarket, perfectly adequate for the needs of the town. It also has a couple of good butchers, a baker, a farm-shop greengrocer, newsagent, wine merchant... and so on. They all co-exist happily in a well-balanced little shopping centre, along with a couple of nice coffee shops, book shop and sundry specialists.

Tesco is going to throw the whole thing completely out of kilter. It will no doubt force the closure of many of the above, and Hadleigh will become just another parade of antique shops.

It's heartbreaking.

 

[Nemesis]

I agree - Hadleigh should be protected.

But it won't be. (Even though JG lives there. And who can blame him?)

It's called progress.

I seem to think we had the Tesco discussion before though...

We have Sainsbury's coming. A small one. Enough, however,to possibly damage, if not close down, the Co-op of long standing.

But apparently damaging the reputation of the Co-op is nought, and the idiocy of some folks astounding:

http://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/unknown/viewarticle.aspx?id=825697

The story is long, the report a pack of porkies, the Editor of the Courant a *&%$£"1, and I think a complaint to the PCC is the only move.

But the damage is done.

Another local rentagob:

http://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/news/viewarticle.aspx?id=827172

and another misleading article.

The Editor - Colin Tapping - is a man who has stated in an editorial that we conservationists are 'sincere but misguided'. That's in an area stuffed full of history and a WHS.

Misguided. Hmmmmm.

Rant over.


But all ye who shoppe at Tesco - this is world domination folks. But there are people who love it.

 

[Nemesis]

http://www.hadleigh.org.uk/

 

[middi]

If we choose to eat " fresh" peppers, strawberies, grapes, etc,,etc,, in the midlle of january AND feel quite happy to pay their extortionated prices, it serves us right that these supermarkets will keep springing up everywhere.

They supply our need. We are the mugs.

 

[shelli]

The rot is getting everywhere - even in the Lakes - which has v strict planning restrictions

They snuck a Tesco Express into Bowness on Windermere last year as part of the Royal Hotel re-development - the Co-op in Bowness had served tourists and locals well for decades.

But LDNP planners are sneaky lot who allow the big money in while rejecting, for example, the building of affordable housing for local people - the residential projects that get through see projects like the Charles Church redevelopment of the Mountain Ash hotel which, while in process, advertised itself modestly as "a selection of 2 and 3 bed apartments" with local occupancy clauses. it looked like a cheap build too, the bits that they added on to the original victorian building.
When finished they were immediately upgraded to "stunning luxury 2 and 3 bedroom apartments and penthouses" and were marketed entirely at holiday makers with starting prices of £295,000.00 (well beyond the means of local families on average combined annual income of 25,000) "Local Occupancy clause... err sorry no dont remember any of those...what do they look like?"

Apparently you have to have lived and worked in the area for a total of 3 whole months to qualify under a local occupancy clause - mental :roll:

sorry - went off a bit there - hope the earlier poster called Micky has added me to his foe list so i dont bore him

BTW is Manni Cohen still alive - can we write to him and tell him to do little versions of tesco for nice small towns - perhaps franchises which local business men can run under their own banners in their own buildings ?

 

[Flyfisher]

They snuck a Tesco Express into Bowness on Windermere last year as part of the Royal Hotel re-development - the Co-op in Bowness had served tourists and locals well for decades.

. . . . in which case why would their customers flock to the new Tesco? Surely they'd need a good reason to change?

BTW is Manni Cohen still alive - can we write to him and tell him to do little versions of tesco for nice small towns -

They already have: http://www.multimap.com/clients/browse.cgi?client=tesco1&GridE=539543&GridN=187624

 

[Nemesis]

Yes, that Royal Hotel development is deeply depressing. But in a very good location. The Co-op you have to move slightly off the main street to find. As are several buildings going up grim. I agree about the Co-op - a fine small store, but you see what it needed was a Tesco. Nowhere is complete without one. It's quite a depressing sight, really, the proverbial sore thumb.

It's like when a certain burger chain wanted to open up in Hexham - local councillors were falling over themselves to welcome it, as it was considered a mark of distinction that such a global business wanted to open there.

The smells, the litter, the traffic, the nasty lit up signs - all seen as signs of a successful town. Parents were writing to the Courant saying that their children were being deprived of the treat of having a burger. Birthdays were unable to be celebrated in appropriate style. Those who fought it off were derided as being stick in the mud, backward looking. Thankfully it hasn't so far happened.

We did get a giant Tesco. It took over an existing business so didn't require planning permission (which I suspect it would not have got, given a great deal of planning history) and given where it is situated, it has indeed closed down a good Co-op, built on a site at the other end of town which was the former mart, but tucked out of sight and in a sensitive (as far as it is able) building. Tesco looks like every ghastly Tesco everywhere, the corporate Tesco before it decided to get 'architects' with 'names' to 'design' them.

So given that there is only so much food you can buy, the Co-op has given up. Instead - M and S is moving in. Not food, other things. So smaller shops will close. More charity shops will take over.

What next - the Listed Forum cinema? Then we can have a Vue instead. Well, that's another thing no town can be without now.

Clone town Britain. And oh yes people find it all modern and exciting. They flock. Well, some people.

Baaa.

 

[Flyfisher]

it has indeed closed down a good Co-op,

So why did all the former co-op customers decide to change to Tesco (which is the implication)?

 

[Nemesis]

Well not all - but Tesco is just over the bridge and you don't have to go into town, and far more easily accessed by car. It's huge, designed to draw people from miles around. It would not have got permission but because of a history of particular circumstances it didn't require it. And (laugh not) it's seen as more upmarket than the Co-op by some.

So - another small town becomes clone town. Sad IMHO.

 

[shelli]

Well not all - but Tesco is just over the bridge and you don't have to go into town, and far more easily accessed by car.

And this is possibly the core of the problem. I don't know about the towns across and down the country where you guys live but Kendal is atrocious since some town planner in a shiny suit (who'd just graduated) got to re-design our one way system and pedestrianise our town centre. Ours is a hub town - people come to shop from 10-15 miles all around (more in some cases - this is a rural area). It is their local town and they have to pay for parking everywhere in town - the traffic wardens hover around waiting til parking has expired so the feeling is - get in, get what you need and get out of town to Asda or Morrisons where you can take your time.

(You can of course park in M&S or our local supermarket Booths - but then you have to buy stuff from them - and of course they are expensive - the local butcher & fishmonger are much better quality and value)

I wish the local businesses in the chamber of trade had got together in time in the past and put a package together to buy land and use it for free town centre parking. But they are a reactive bunch and nobody took responsibility in time - the leader stated that he thought it was the job of the council to act in the interests of local commerce ! - :roll: Naive, or what!

Rant over

 

[Nemesis]

I quite like Booths. If you have to have a supermarket, Booths is the sort to have.

 

[shelli]

I quite like Booths. If you have to have a supermarket, Booths is the sort to have.

absolutely - lots of local produce- really support local growers and a good employer to boot - plus theres Artisan downstairs - but it is full of top brands and not everyone can afford it ( I Know I cant by the end of the month)

 

[Moo]

There's quite a battle going on in Harleston (the Norfolk one), where the council in their wisdom are trying to do away with the free street parking. It's only a little town, but is the main shopping magnet for the outlying villages and still has all the proper independent shops.
Lots about it in the EDP (Eastern Daily Press).

 

[Penners]

There's quite a battle going on in Harleston (the Norfolk one), where the council in their wisdom are trying to do away with the free street parking.

Here in the Babergh DC area, we have same debate every year. So far free parking is hanging on by its fingernails in Hadleigh and Sudbury, but I don't think it'll last long.

It's too easy a source of additional income for the council.

In truth, I don't object to paying a reasonable parking fee if I'm being provided a convenient place to leave my car while I shop or go to the theatre. I am, after all, occupying a bit of land for a time.

 

[biffvernon]

I quite like Booths. If you have to have a supermarket, Booths is the sort to have.

absolutely - lots of local produce- really support local growers and a good employer to boot - plus theres Artisan downstairs - but it is full of top brands and not everyone can afford it ( I Know I cant by the end of the month)

Agreed. Pity they are only here:

 

[Nemesis]

I can't say I have found it full of top brands... seems to have a good mix of stuff. Well OK it doesn't sell the cheapest sort of 'value' stuff, but that's connected with not being a global business and driving down prices paid to producers I suppose.

( It does usually have cheap offer on champagne, dahlings - and proper beer, especially Jennings, which you can usually get at around a quid a bottle...)

I quite like Waitrose too. But I do my best to support the Co-op, especially as they pay me back out of the profits.

 

[Penners]

I quite like Booths.

Me too, although given the choice I'd go for Bombay Sapphire.

 

[Nemesis]

Not keen on gin. Nor is the OH since, as a toddler, he picked up a bottle and took a long slug...

 

[Penners]

Understandable. Not even the French like slugs.