The shopping centre used to boast walkways linking it to the hospital, courts, and surrounding estates. Inside, it used to boast a cornucopia of shops including Woolworths and Littlewoods.
However, most of the vendors have left, leaving the building as a semi-vacant shell with just a few shops still operating.
Coffee House manager Magda Spratek, 35, owns one of the businesses still going, a café which has been based in the building since June 2021.
She told Cheshire Live: “We are quite lucky because we have regulars, but it’s very rare that we see a new face, someone who says ‘Let’s go to Shopping City and see what’s there’.”
She added: “It would be so much nicer if we had a place like Primark; a big shop to bring people in. I see the same faces so often that I wonder how they can afford to come here all the time.”
The bewilderment is shared by the local community. Nathan Dawson, 30, said: “It’s behind the times. It’s just stayed in the early-2000s.
“It needs a lot of development. It needs to be brought into the modern times. Everything seems to be developed around Runcorn, but never Runcorn itself. [sic]”
Barbara Roberts, 80, a volunteer at a nearby Primary School said she had seen how it had changed: “It is a shame. I’ve been here for 48 years. It’s a shame that it has changed; both the new town and the old town.
“We’ve got to go over the bridge to buy normal things. All the investment goes over there [to Widnes].”
As a result of the vacant nature of the building, the future of one of Runcorn’s iconic buildings is uncertain.
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