Ware Online Community Forum

Scouter wrote:Did anyone make the presentation up at Van Hage yesterday or today? I was a bit rushed and only got a five minute gander but it expanded a little on what we already know. They said that Waitrose will definitely have a café albeit a small one, the unloading bay yard at the back will be accessed via an entrance exit just past the houses and it will be covered.

Yup! Looks pretty much like a supermarket to me.

WickenMan wrote:

Scouter wrote:Did anyone make the presentation up at Van Hage yesterday or today? I was a bit rushed and only got a five minute gander but it expanded a little on what we already know. They said that Waitrose will definitely have a café albeit a small one, the unloading bay yard at the back will be accessed via an entrance exit just past the houses and it will be covered.

Yup! Looks pretty much like a supermarket to me.

You're right, characterless - just like a supermarket. Bring back the windmill.

Now the application is in, how do they choose the sequential sites?
Kibes Lane and Broadmeads car parks
Ware College
and the Co-Op site - which is apparently unsuitable for use as a food store (didn't anyone tell Sainsbury?)

Have they applied to build away from Van Hages then?

Planning Application Ref: 3/14/1708/FP

Part demolition and refurbishment of existing garden centre with café extension; erection of foodstore (approx. 2,047 sqm net sales) with café and external seating, extended service road, new roundabout from Amwell Hill and other associated highways, servicing and landscaping works.

The Little Amwell plan seems to be at odds with comments made in The Telegraph yesterday by Waitrose MD Mark Price

The Waitrose boss said that British supermarkets would have to reinvent themselves in order to survive a shift in spending from out-of-town stores to convenience shops

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/1123 ... -boss.html

Yes, he's been saying this in a number of places. It does appear to be at odds with a move from Bircherly Green to Van Hages. I can only assume they feel that a larger number of better off people frequent Van Hages, which is after all a pretty expensive place to shop.

ASDA are trapped between strategies too. They are moving towards an online shopping led strategy with smaller stores to complement that. The Ware store predates the strategy and doesn't fit it, as it's supposed to attract shoppers from 'the A10 corridor'.

More worrying is how busy the place was yesterday. I had to go right to the back of van hage car park yesterday to get parked. That's the busiest I have ever seen the place in my 8 years here and that was on a sunday lunchtime! I can't help but think Ware has turned into the busy London I left behind a decade ago, it was never this busy.

Overdevelopment is another question. East Herts Council is deliberately trying to almost double the size of Ware and other towns up the A10, so that London's suburbs will reach in an unbroken strip development to Buntingford if they get their way. Life around here will change forever in a bad way.

mb1 wrote:Yes, he's been saying this in a number of places. It does appear to be at odds with a move from Bircherly Green to Van Hages. I can only assume they feel that a larger number of better off people frequent Van Hages, which is after all a pretty expensive place to shop.

ASDA are trapped between strategies too. They are moving towards an online shopping led strategy with smaller stores to complement that. The Ware store predates the strategy and doesn't fit it, as it's supposed to attract shoppers from 'the A10 corridor'.

Covered in last night's Newsnight (the general trend, that is)

16:00 - 28:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... t-17112014