Good times

Cllr John Oddy has been making his feelings about the dearth of shops in Colwyn Bay clear. In an interview for the Pioneer, speaking speficially about the empty Woolworth's building, he said "It's a good location. The council have been actively trying to find someone to fill it. We have even been kicking around ideas of a community project to go there, but we have not come up with a decent suggestion at the moment. Colwyn Bay is full of empty shops - it's terrible. We have been trying to attract people.

"We need to drag people into the town. Once they are here, shop keepers will benefit, empty shops will be taken up by people getting on the gravy train and the high street shops will come - a small escalation and we're a shopping centre."

Sadly, Colwyn Bay is seen neither as a potential shopping venue, nor - mistakenly, we believe - as a holiday resort. Whilst the former is somewhat understandable, given Llandudno's burgeoning shopping areas, the latter is bizarrely out of touch.

Colwyn Bay's potential is enormous; a much better beach than Llandudno, a potentially excellent pier, a superb prom, Leisure centre and pleasure boating venue at Rhos and one of Wales' top attractions in the Zoo. However, there are two things missing, both of which are vital to the restoration of a once proud family destination: investment and imagination. Those two words alone lie behind every successful venture in the tourist industry, but seem curiously lacking today.

Tourists from the cities like the open expanses of water but - with easy access to places like Alton Towers and the Disney parks - there's a lot of competition. This blog has suggested ideas before - monorails, sand consolidation for the beaches and chair lifts, but these ideas all cost a lot of money. However, unless big tourist businesses can be persuaded to develop the area, then the future for Colwyn Bay doesn't look good.