‘Disneyland’ York (From The Oxford Times)

What do we need then?

more useful shops. I went through the city centre today and counted 2 carephone warehouse shops, 2 ee shops, 2 vodafone shops, 2 phones 4 u shops, at least 3 starbucks, and at least 2 subways.... do we really need two phone shops of the same network operator selling the exact same phones and the exact same tarriffs??

Unfortunately the main problem with York city centre is the lack of big retail space. M&S wants to expand and have just a single store in York rather than sharing resources over 2 stores, Debenhams is stuck in some crappy dingy store because there's nothing bigger, and then there's Primark who's been wanting to set up in York for about a decade now but not found anywhere big enough. Small to midi retail units aren't required - if they were then that one at Merchantgate wouldn't still be standing empty since the day it was built.