New Business openings and closures around you?

Lucan, Sutton and Blackrock were all effectively co-flagships. Company offices were in Lucan and Sutton.

Blackrock is also where they had their failed attempt at doing petrol station stores, in the Texaco.

The good Supervalues are the ones that were Superquinns. Knocklyon, Sundrive Road, Ballinteer, Rathgar, Ranelagh, Walkinstown etc.

The sh1te ones were Londis who went to Musgraves when BWG came in and Musgraves just deliver whatever leftover stock they have to them, sometimes without telling them. "Heres a pallet of cheap bog roll put it on sale".

No way Blackrock SV will close! People would protest in the streets!

I had to check the date on that post - could have been 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010 and 2015. (I can remember the guy in Toymaster and also Mike Bikes and Totterdels going on about how abysmal the council were.) I looked at some units myself around 2000, 2001 and walked away

DLCC seem to have a certain cohort of people that are anti-business and your post is what I've heard from the mid-80's from various Dun Laoghaire businesses.

For a town that has such potential to be a shopping destination, its a shambles.

We'll drive past Ballinteer to get Knocklyon or Churchtown. It's not great at all.

They've invested a sh1tload of money in upgrading Knocklyon in recent years. It would make no sense to close it down now.

Blackrock SC would be destroyed if that happened, and they only did it up a couple of years ago. Must have spent millions. Other tenants would not be happy with the reduced footfall. It'd hard to fathom the reason - it always seems busy enough

They've just spend a good few million doing up Knocklyon 

What footfall.

I was in there last Wednesday afternoon, about 3pm.

Admittedly it was a damp day out, but I thought the place had been deliberately evacuated, so empty it was.

Ah I think that's a bit hyperbolic.

I'm in there every single day and footfall is steady, there are no other butchers or fishmongers in Blackrock, the post office is in there , etc.

Honestly I think the main reason they got the self service checkouts to do so much of the heavy lifting is that they can't get enough staff for the amount of business they do.

I would be extremely surprised if they closed.

Dun Laoghaire, for reasons mentioned above, would make much sense to shut down . Lots of local alternatives already and that's even before Aldi opens in the same shopping centre..

It needs to be knocked down and replaced with a decently high rise / high density apartment development, with commercial units at ground floor.

A ground floor of commercial units could house most of the existing retail units from the shopping center. Instead of having them as they are now sparsely spread through a three quarters empty, zombified, shopping center.

And hundreds of apartments would bring thousands of new residents to the heart of the town, bringing a bit of life to it, and lots of consumer spending.

There is a new primary care center on the top floor of the center now too.

A nice new development there would be great, but while superficially appealing, my problem with this solution is that it would leave a gaping hole in the town for a few years while it was redeveloped, and I would fear that the town overall would lose a lot of footfall because of this. So I think any solution would be better to work with the confines of the existing building. Probably need an imaginative to redesign the interior, find some way to improve the facade etc.

I believe all the ex SQ stores were available to buy, all the time. They were generally much bigger and with much more varied services (Lucan has a post office, bank and formerly a cafe inside the shop for instance) than franchisers had handled; and were usually in areas with no strong local SV previously.

Didn't Musgraves buy Donnybrook Fair precisely to stop SV drifting downwards and wasn't it an attempt to match Dunnes move upmarket? Suprised DF is not mentioned in any of the posts above.

I haven't been in SV Blackrock for a long time. The smell of baking bread would hit you when you walked in the door in Fergal's time, don't know what it's like these days.

I haven't been in the one in Blackrock in a few years, but the one in Knocklyon was refurbished a few years ago. A great shame that they moved the bakery from the very front of the shop (you'd have to walk right past it) to the back. Also don't seem to get anywhere as much of a smell of the baking bread as you would previously.

There was a "Donnybrook Fair" put in (but it's just a fridge section), a Caramico pizza count (which is no longer open) and from memory it feels like the butcher and fishmonger sections are a lot smaller. The cheese and delicatessen section is quite nice.

All in all though, it just feels like very high prices for a fairly average experience.