CCS Parking - My Take On It

I was down and around the CCS last week and popped over to the shops there. What struck me was, in a normal middle of the week in a normal middle of the day I struggled to park. Yes I could park but I had to a little bit of hunting to do so.

Now I’m willing to bet that if I’d dropped down the road a bit to the Bay or up to Culver then parking would have been far easier. Indeed didn’t BBC Wales / ITV Wales and the South Wales written media (Media Wales) once produce program after written copy about how “Sam’s madcap dream” and this new retail park would be another white elephant to add to the others around the City? I remember watching one documentary where expert after expert queued up to tell us how building a new stadium on the back of a new retail park was complete madness. That’s all we’d get was another empty park with boarded up empty shop units. They even showed the failures at the Bay site and Culver as “proof” Sam’s ramblings were that of a madman.

Now before those short memory hacks at Media Wales get all defensive and swear blind that it wasn’t them who were negative about this new retail park, let us remind them. I’m still waiting for Mark Bloom to get his kit off and run butt naked down Sloper Road. It was just something he promised at almost every opportunity when talking about the promise of a new stadium. “If ever Cardiff get a new stadium, I will streak down Sloper Road..” he would scoff, many a time, and time again…. Not that I want to see Bloomy’s junk swinging wildly as he runs around but it would have comedy value. : -)

Another thing that crossed my mind whilst looking for that parking space was the row of trees down the side of the main road there. Yes they are still there. They were the ones that the Council got Cardiff City to deliver an “endangered species” study on. They spotted some magpie and crows nests in those trees and wanted to make sure they weren’t endangered before they got cut down. There was also a butterfly study as well as I remember. Did any of the three new rugby stadiums built in recent years have to do that? Or was it just Cardiff City? It’s just the Liberty shot up from nowhere, as did the one the Scarlets got. As for the Mill Stad, it seems anything and everything was knocked down to make way for that one; well apart from one shitty little Conference League style Cardiff Arms Park, which left an embarrassing gap in the one side of the Mill Stad.

Back the parking at CCS. In a normal day it is pretty bloody busy there and I’d say it’s the busiest of all the retail parks in and around Cardiff. Those shops there don’t do badly at all for their foot fall figures. I think it would be very fair to say that the main reason their foot fall is so high is because of the new CCS. Those shops have enjoyed a very good location simply because of being on the doorstep of a football club – Cardiff City Football Club.

So why am I hearing about all the whinging and whining about football fans parking there on a match day for an hour or two?

Lets face it, especially at the moment, Cardiff City games are quite far apart. It’s not like they are playing every day and all day. If those shops there have to be inconvenienced by fan parking for say 2-3 hours, once a fortnight, then that would be just about as much as they need to suffer. Well whoopy do!. There are plenty of struggling businesses out there that would kill for the foot fall that CCS retail park is getting, and if the price was a 2 hour parking nightmare every so often then I’m sure they would see that as a small price to pay for their overall busy crowds.

In any case the chances are fans are going in to these shops and spending money anyway. How many kids drag their parents in to Smyths on a match day? Does Gregg’s report a massive fall in pasty sales on a match day? I doubt it very much. The thing is here, if you do spend money in any of those shops then the club don’t get any of it. At least at Ninian Park they had a deal going with the burger bar in the car park. I bet Greggs do not.

I think for any of those shops to whinge about match day parking is a bit of a cheek. They knew exactly where they were going. It wasn’t a secret that a football club was there. And I would think they knew exactly why they wanted to be there over the other so called “white elephant” retail parks they could have gone to. If they wanted plenty of parking then they could have opted to locate at one of those quieter parks.

I see on here quite a lot about people getting parking tickets and that isn’t fair. My last question is how come fans leaders and the club themselves are not standing up and sticking up for these fans. These shops on that site don’t know they are born and someone needs to be pointing this out to them to be honest.

what i dont understand is that no park and ride is available to CCS on match day......