The City Centre Retail Partnership board meeting met first thing this morning. The sense of anticipation among members was palpable, with the opening of the St David shopping centre now just nine days away. Stephen Madeley, the centre manager, gave us an update on the progress towards the Big Day, with 49-50 shops promised to be open for business, and another thirty to come on stream before the Christmas rush.
He told us that the staff team overseeing the centre expected to be working 24/7 for the next week, and were booked into hotels to ease the pain of the long hours. With fifty shops to equip, the access of vehicles into the shopping centre has to be carefully controlled. Shopfitters and suppliers are required to park at the building contractors' storage site at Wentloog, and wait there until called in to the city to make their deliveries. It's a terrific piece of organisation to ensure that everything is in place for the Big Day.
On the way back from the meeting, heard a random voice out of the crowd, a woman saying loudly to her friend "It's the twenty second of October", The answer to the question "When's it all opening?"
A couple of weeks ago, Heras fencing returned to St John Street, enclosing that plane tree which was planted too close to the church, and a couple of dozen paving slabs around it were then dug up. What next? I wondered. It didn't look as if the tree was going to be extracted. It was just a question of Wait and See. Last Friday it became clear a semicircular bench was to be installed, as one has already appeared on Hayes Island, and possibly more around new trees down the Hayes. The bench installation outside church was complete by this morning. There's only the paving to tidy up now. More new signposts have appeared, new lighting columns, extra bins, and the areas enclosed by Heras fencing are progressively shrinking. Changes take place now on a daily basis.
No wonder there's a sense of excitement in the air.
I got home to an email timed at just after ten thirty this morning, from TalkTalk, containing the new access key for installing F-Secure Anti-Virus. Receiving this meant the de-activation of the existing key, which somewhat confused my laptop. It took several reboots to get to the desktop, eventually with internet access switched off, in order to access the installed Anti Virus program and re-enter the key. After that it worked fine.
He told us that the staff team overseeing the centre expected to be working 24/7 for the next week, and were booked into hotels to ease the pain of the long hours. With fifty shops to equip, the access of vehicles into the shopping centre has to be carefully controlled. Shopfitters and suppliers are required to park at the building contractors' storage site at Wentloog, and wait there until called in to the city to make their deliveries. It's a terrific piece of organisation to ensure that everything is in place for the Big Day.
On the way back from the meeting, heard a random voice out of the crowd, a woman saying loudly to her friend "It's the twenty second of October", The answer to the question "When's it all opening?"
A couple of weeks ago, Heras fencing returned to St John Street, enclosing that plane tree which was planted too close to the church, and a couple of dozen paving slabs around it were then dug up. What next? I wondered. It didn't look as if the tree was going to be extracted. It was just a question of Wait and See. Last Friday it became clear a semicircular bench was to be installed, as one has already appeared on Hayes Island, and possibly more around new trees down the Hayes. The bench installation outside church was complete by this morning. There's only the paving to tidy up now. More new signposts have appeared, new lighting columns, extra bins, and the areas enclosed by Heras fencing are progressively shrinking. Changes take place now on a daily basis.
No wonder there's a sense of excitement in the air.
I got home to an email timed at just after ten thirty this morning, from TalkTalk, containing the new access key for installing F-Secure Anti-Virus. Receiving this meant the de-activation of the existing key, which somewhat confused my laptop. It took several reboots to get to the desktop, eventually with internet access switched off, in order to access the installed Anti Virus program and re-enter the key. After that it worked fine.
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