The Kintyre Forum

Saddened to hear the Chocolate Box in Campbeltown's Main Street has closed.

that truly is sad news.

My children and I from down here are devastated. Me for my Oddfellows(less and less places to get them) and them for the ice cream and other sweeties they get when we are up (granted only once a year)

As noted on other posts previously, unrealistic valuations for commercial property sales or rentals in Campbeltown will increasingly lead to vacant premises awaiting tumbleweed rolling up and down Main Street and Longrow.

Unrealistic expectations you exclaim ! ! !

If a business with premises sells in August 2008 for £30,000 how realistic is it for those same (virtually untouched) premises to be on sale for £70,000 four years later ?

I ask you ......
Has the Campbeltown commercial property market boomed ? ? ?
or .....
Have small retailers never had it so good ? ? ?

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... clnk&gl=uk

Well, Muppetanimal, I can only agree with what you say, but would add that we can rest assured that the simple economic forces of supply and demand will dictate what rentals and property prices can be realised from properties.

Having said that, without blaming any one in particular, the supermarkets in general have closed down town centres throughout the UK, leaving us with streets full of empty shops.

Now that they have annihilated most of their competition, they can sell us Horse meat dressed up aes "Beef" and Christ knows what other delicacies that we haven't yet unearthed.

That is the benefit of the supermarket culture, and is the thing that should send shoppers back to what remains of the local traders that have managed to survive, and give them our custom, for traceable products that are of superior quality. Is the price difference that great? I know that when we want a good bit of meat the local butcher provides a better product than Tesco.

All of this has nothing to do with the Chocolate Box, which is merely another casualty of the supermarket culture.

Those of us who knew Campbeltown from the 1950s will know what Main St and Longrow were like then. The difference is unbelievable, and supermarkets are the single indisputable cause.

As Muppetanimal implies, this not only kills local business, it also has the concomitant effect of causing commercial property prices to plummet.