Re-paint                   

The phrase ‘painting the town red’ is usually associated with going out in the evening to eat, drink and enjoy yourself. In 1837 Henry de La Poer Beresford, the 3rd Marquess of Waterford and friends did just that, and after a circuit of the local watering holes and still in high spirits and not quite ready to retire for the night made their way towards the Market Place and, to celebrate their ‘successful’ day, proceeded to daub red paint over the walls, doors and windows of a number of town centre buildings. Almost 180 years later, Melton Mowbray is in need of another coat of exuberance (preferably legal this time) as, like many other town centres, it finds itself at the mercy of out of town facilities and the ‘digital shop’.

REpaint proposes an exciting ‘go to’ contemporary food and beverage offer in association with an imaginative revamp of an existing underperforming shopping centre. It concentrates on better use of disparate spaces, improved footfall through a new ‘retail hotspot’ in a prime location and reinvigorated daytime and evening economies.

These new spaces would be 'fed' from the increased permeability through the site will generate higher footfall and the creation of an established retail circuit forming an extension of the prime retailing in Marketplace within a fully pedestrianised and partly covered retail environment all anchored by car parking at the rear.

The new floorspace providing this new connectivity will adopt modular solutions around which there will be opportunities for seasonal event management such as a Big Screen and a Pop Up cinema aimed at widening the customer base of the town centre, extending trading hours particularly on market days and improving the evening economy with an enhanced cultural dimension.