We’ve already looked at a number of businesses around the town on this blog, including Café in the Corner, Mad4Movies, Just Desserts, Wrexham.com and King Street Coffee.
Many of those interviewed reported steady trade and an encouraging optimism in improvements to the town centre.
And there’s more good news for the town centre as one week this summer sees a record high of visitors.
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Wrexham town centre saw its visitor count reach more than 100,000 people during a week in August, reaching the high point during the school summer holidays.
A weekly visitor count of footfall on the high street reached 102,487 during the week starting on Sunday, August 13, with the highest daily count – of 17,462 visitors – on Saturday, August 19.
The count of visitors is recorded by a new pedestrian counter at the corner of Hope Street and Regent Street.
“a sign of confidence in our town centre”
Cllr Terry Evans, Lead Member for Economic Performance and Regeneration, said: “I’m very pleased to see that the weekly figure broke the 100,000 mark – that’s fantastic for a single week.
“We normally expect good footfall during the summer holidays, but this really is excellent, and I hope this will be a further sign of confidence in our town centre and an encouragement to those trading, or looking to trade, in Wrexham.
“We’ll have more detailed figures by the end of the quarter and that will help us to look at the knock-on impact this high level of footfall had on traders and overall takings, so we can expect some interesting findings when it comes back.”
Following an analysis of Wrexham’s High Street performance by the Manchester Metropolitan University back in 2014, a number of recommendations were put forward and last year a new town centre steering group was created to implement a 25-point plan for the town.
One of these goals was to look at ways of increasing footfall, through initiatives such as enhancing the appearance of town along with developing new events. Data from a new electronic pedestrian counter installed on Hope Street has been feeding through weekly counts to the Town Centre Management team
The businesses currently taking part in the project are spread across the town centre and their sales figures (expressed as a percentage increase or decrease) are submitted every Wednesday. The data is then processed and a sales report returned to each business showing how their sales have done vs the town centre, plus they receive an overall view of sales and footfall in Wrexham.
The team now hopes to install additional counters in other parts of town as they continue to collate more information to support future initiatives and the development of the town as a competitive destination.
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