What Shops Would Ripon Benefit From Having In The New Development

In the last week it has been announced that Argos will soon be moving into the new West of the Marketplace development, which leaves the question of who else will be joining them?

Alongside the new Booths supermarket, which promises to offer shoppers high end grocery shopping, we already know that one of the retail units will be taken up by Argos.

We think this is a good move as Ripon needs a store like Argos as it is these national chain stores that people will travel to other towns to shop at. The products that Argos sell are wide ranging which might impede on local shops, but if people want to buy from the Argos catalogue it's better for them to stay in Ripon rather that going elsewhere.

So this now poses the question of who will be taking up the other retail units, and also it's interesting to find out peoples views on what shops we are lacking that make locals travel to Harrogate or York on a Saturday.

For us at Ripon Internet, a big loss to Ripon was when Choices closed, which meant that there was no where to rent DVD's or games, or to be able to buy from a huge selection of pre-owned and new titles. Yes we have Woolworths but on many occasion we have been at the till waiting to pay for a DVD, with the case in our hands, only to be told its out of stock!

Another shop that we would love to see in Ripon is a big sports shop. Ripon has many local sports teams who need clothing and equipment, but people have to travel to other towns to get a new pair of football boots or some Adidas tracksuit bottoms for instance.

So what other stores would you like to see in the new development. Is it more national chain stores that we should hope to attract, or more specialist locally run shops?

You can have your say here, or vote in the poll on the home page of Ripon Internet.