Creasey’s backs High Street as its new store opens today

The former HSBC bank building at 13 High Street has been undergoing renovations for 27 months as part of a £12.5m. redevelopment.

Despite the continued rise of online shopping, managing director Jonathan Creasey said there was still value in investing in bricks and mortar.

‘There’s still a huge need for real face-to-face contact in retail,’ he said.

‘The internet has been a thing for a long time now, but people love the community aspect. It’s a very personal activity. It’s easy to grab hold of the UK headlines and say bricks- and-mortar retail is dead, but actually there is a huge drive for people to be sociable and come out and go to Town.’

The project has been on the drawing board since 2017, but suffered the inevitable delays and cost implications of the pandemic.

‘We were having a sort of site meeting with our project team and then Covid hit. That pushed us back by three years, and after that we decided there was actually no benefit in waiting. There’s no good time to do something other than today. You know, you could wait for that perfect moment, for outside influences to pass, like the war in Ukraine and inflation, but in the meantime we’ve got an empty building.’

The store will be a new draw to what is sometimes perceived as a struggling High Street, but Mr Creasey disputed that.

‘Footfall is actually up this year,’ he said.

‘There are some empty units, but actually our vacancy rate is about half of Jersey and about half of the standard UK town. Unfortunately, at the moment, we’ve got a few too many vacant units on the main High Street. But there’s lots of activity around those buildings.’

He added that he had seen a real drive from the parish to smarten up the area in the last seven or eight months.

‘And we’re playing our part,' he said.

'We’re not claiming that it’s our job or we are doing it all. It’s just we are part of the fabric of the town.’

The other worry for any local retailer was the possibility of a goods and services tax, but Mr Creasey said he still hoped other options might be found to increase tax revenues.

‘We hope it won’t come to pass, but at the same time we’re not daft. We know there has to be something as there’s a black hole in the island’s finances,’ he said.

‘But it is about trying to work out the best way and the fairest way to do that. GST, as it was drafted last time, would create an unlevel playing field for the local retailer, the person who’s investing in the local economy by employing people, paying electricity, paying TRP, paying all those bills. We were going to be penalised, and I think we would have been hurting as a result.

‘I think now there’s an opportunity to look at other tax options. Previously, I’m not sure there was an ambition genuinely to do that. But if GST happens, we’ll just have to work with it, and work with the States to work out a way that the local retailer isn’t being penalised.’