PINCH yourselves. It’s actually happening. After years of big promises and dashed hopes, John Lewis is to open in Oxford within four years.
The city is getting a top-class, blue-chip retailer, arguably the best in the business.
So it’s good news from that point of view But the greater significance is what the arrival of the store chain means for the city as a whole Jobs, for a start. Hundreds of them with an employer that calls its staff ‘partners’ and shares the profits with them.
More shoppers too, not just for John Lewis but for the city centre as a whole. Many of the thousands who have been tempted away to Reading and elsewhere will certainly return.
Then there are the ancillary benefits. Other stores and restaurants moving in to cash in on ‘the John Lewis effect.’ This is not just about a new store opening in Oxford. It is about much, much more than that.
Roll on 2017.
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