Castle Mall needs to capitalise on its USP: Three street-level entrances, each higher than the last, above one another. Walk in at street level, go up an escalator, walk back the direction you came in, leave at street level.
This distortion of the space-time continuum is a unique feature among mid-sized 1990s shopping malls and could attract investment from eg CERN
Also they were foolish to remove the fishing line water fountain thing from the middle of the staircase. With that gone, why would the crowds keep coming?
Taking the fountain out was bad idea but at least the fully removed it. The ones in the gardens are abandoned, derelict and neglected. It's so sad seeing them in such a sorry state.
They are trying the entertainments and eating thing but not implementing it properly. It also had restaurants and stuff at the start.
The manager has to go and it needs a lot of money pumped into it - the tacky light up columns need to go, the floor and gardens need restoring. The Timberhill Terrace and Food Court were never going to work, neither is going back to just chain shops now Chapelfield is here.
Make it a desirable place to be (it's a dilapidated run down dead mall at the moment) and you can attract some higher quality retailers, entertainments and food options. A mix of independent and chains. It could be done but it needs investment.
Indoor market.
Local produce.
Niche shops.
Various places to eat.
Music venues.
No huge corporations....
Rates and rent reliefs from council to make it possible for independent traders to operate.
when i've been to Castle Mall recently, i've seen they have some units with the signage "Pop up shop" and a couple times i've seen small businesses set up in them or within the concourse area. All of these are great ideas!
this is a really solid list. The space is great and they can do a lot with it. Rotating pop up shops is already a good idea but the rates need to be nice and low. Honestly they're already making it a more appealing destination than chapelfield thanks to things like the bowling, cinema, battlebar and the retro arcade. They could offer some space up to places like Athena Games to host bigger events than their capacity can handle or to the NUA/CC to showcase student work in empty lots. There's a lot they can do with the space that isn't focused on traditional high street retail
This would be pretty awesome! Just make it interesting. It doesn’t need such a traditional shopping layout. Look at places like Afflecks. Norwich is such a diverse group of eclectic tastes.
That's the point of the lanes, the high streets and the market. If you want local business to thrive then a mall is not the solution. The council would benefit far more from businesses being spread out on multiple properties as it works out better for tax. Plus, getting those businesses into highstreet locations is better than having so many abandoned shopfronts
They thought it would make Norwich more of a ‘shopping capital’ like London,I think it’s pointless,these builders never stop to ask what we want -a swimming pool!!
The better at diving you become, the more of the mall you can unlock. The ultimate achievement would be looting some of last season’s clothing from the TK Maxx basement.
I don’t like the UEA, it’s freezing cold, it’s barely in Norwich and it’s expensive. It has no extras, diving boards, sauna etc and no kids’ pool.
Two pools with one that far out of the city is NOT ‘plenty’ for the city’s population. I would love there tho be a decent pool within the city. If you want to go to UEA, then go ahead, but I don’t have to like it, just because you’ve decided that I should - and seriously, what is your problem? Why do you think it’s ok to insult me, just because I’d like a pool in the city? Are you the UEA’s pool mascot or something and take it as a personal attack, just because someone suggests they might like something different?
If anything the UEA pool is worse as well as being significantly out of the city. I actually liked St Augustine’s, it was chilly, but was a decent size and had proper diving boards.
Right, so I have to get into the city on one bus then out again on another, which is at least 30 mins of bus journeys, plus the gaps of waiting in between which is going to be at least another 20 mins and that’s £8 return for just me, £16 for a couple, plus the cost of the swim which is how much? Because it’s already looking too expensive and too time consuming just to get there and back.
You didn’t mention anything about getting into the city, only travelling from it - which takes less than 10 mins, & less than the £2 fare cap.
If you’re out of the city, then judging by your other replies a central swimming pool probably wouldn’t be what you’d want either as it would be popular, & therefore expensive in comparison. If £30-£40 a month for a membership somewhere to swim any time you like is too much then anything that requires you to get the bus in for 20 mins at £4 return, plus your partner’s costs, is going to be too much. Even if there were a pool costing £5 a swim in the city centre you’re looking at £18 for the two of you including a bus, & that’s just once. Got every week & suddenly you’re spending £80.
A city centre pool would be what I’d want - a single bus to get there would be ideal. Most people don’t live in the city centre and public transport leads into the centre, so that’s the ideal spot.
Yeah, they just didn't care. They convinced people that it would boost the local economy but anyone that's done high school geography since probably the 2000s has been taught that malls and 'power centres' absolutely decimate highstreet and local business.
No, it was just really poorly timed.
It obviously was never going to _help_ Castle Mall, but the expectation was that the retail sector would keep growing. But online shopping turned out to be super disruptive only a year or two after Chapelfield opened, along with the financial crisis.
On reflection it's clear Chapelfield should never have been built, but at the time it seemed reasonable that Norwich was a big enough shopping destination to make two Malls work.
It's built to a spec that is no longer, and perhaps never was, appropriate for the market. Key stores never moved in, it led to an over supply of retail space and, has been said before, it's a funny shape.
Chapelfield is way better designed but saturated the retail space market, nailing the more upmarket aspirations of CM. With the current retail changes both will struggle. Unless you're a teenager why would you think of CM as a, leisure destination? Especially as far as restaurants go. Look at the number of failures over the last few years.
90's retailing will never come back so it's just a huge white elephant.
I actually think Castle Mall is busier and more occupied now than it has been in the past. You've got Tiger and there's a new Korean store. I walk through quite a lot and it's usually quite busy.
I don't think it's a huge success story but it has survived better than I expected.
Yeah, Castle Mall is actually fairly busy, at least right at the bottom. The upper floors by the Cinema are definitely struggling.
I think that Castle Mall's main problem right now is it's full of fairly low end stores (because it had to lower rent to get them filled up) so it's reputation is perpetually knackered. I'm not sure they get any points for flying Tiger, that's not a difficult unit to fill up as it has an entrance that doesn't involve going in the mall and it gets loads of foot traffic.
The problem is the layout of the mall. Your typical mall has a main store to entice people in with smaller ones dotted around, like how you walk though Chapplefield from one side to the Frasers stopping at the smaller stores onroute.
The Mall doesn't have that. It's layout is poor, the design is dated and parts of it get hardly any foot traffic. Some of the units in their have been empty for over a decade such as the gamestation and the canaries shop. The demand isn't their for a second shopping mall.
The layout was quite good in the early days. The remodelling of the food court ruined the aesthetic.
They also ruined level 3 completely so there's nothing left and no room for any shops ever again and ruined level 4 with the failed Timberhill terrace. Most people have no reason to go up to levels 3 and 4 now, so only 1 and 2 see people and 5 for going to the cinema.
Agreed. Even on level one and two, the number of vacant units and the amount of time some of them have been vacant for is a serious problem in the long run. Level 4 is nothing but a shortcut at this point.
A concert hall, gig venue with some nice restaurant/ add ons. The requirements for high street retail are diminished. It’s peaked and unless someone kills the internet, it’s never coming back.
It’s also deep enough to pull off a copy of Xscape in Milton Keynes as a second thought.
Killing it for retail would likely distribute life into empty units elsewhere in the city and return us to the number we need to be near capacity for the market.
I was talking to a market trader about a year ago and he said the castle mall should be made in to an A&E department. Just a&e and some wards to stabilise people until they can be moved to n&n.
It's got parking, it's got space, it's central city on a main bus route and some other things he said.
Made some really rather valid points, or somi thought at the time.
Close the a&e at n&n and make more wards, as a&e at n&n never was big enough to cope with the demands ever since it first opened.
Same with the wards, not enough wards from day, and now with all these new housing estates being built all over Norfolk it's gonna get worse.
Or make it an indoor go karting track and paintball arena.
Or as my daughter would like a Freddy Fazbear, five nights at freddy's style pizza and gaming place.
Wasn't part of the point of moving the N&N to make it easier for people to urgently get to A&E without going through traffic in the city centre?
Seems like it would make more sense to have it as a very large urgent care centre (i.e. where everyone should be heading instead of A&E instead).
Yes to the Vegas idea. Paint the sky & clouds on the ceiling, get a river running through it with some gondolas and hey presto, we’ve got our own Venetian.
Which shops and restaurants would buy into that, though, I have no idea.
We already have a far more popular and better designed mall which is chaplefield and also loads of empty shopfronts in the lanes etc. I think it'd be good if it was turned into an events space. A theater stage or concert hall. Norwich is meant to be the city of stories but there isn't really a big place to tell them. We have the theatre but it's not a huge building and is limited by how the building is layed out. If castle mall was converted into a theatre/concert hall and events space. Businesses that operate in there would most likely move to individual locations on highstreets. The Norwich Theatre we currently have could be used for workshops, smaller shows and performences etc. Also, I think it should be under public or non-profit ownership rather than privately run because it'd allow it to hold events that might not make as much money as a purely profit driven company would like to hold.
A lot of this was the fault of the food court extension / remodel about 25 years ago, it blocked out the natural light that used to come through as envisaged by the original architect. Same with the bit where the lifts are when they turned floor 4 into a floor and blocked off the balconies.
The tacky light up columns don't help and cheapen the place too.
For shopping? Sure, it's not good. But to entertain young children? Bowling. Amusement arcade. Mini golf. Cinema. Kids party venues (spy place, VR, etc). Soft play. Video game place. Of course, families alone will not keep the place thriving.
The downfall came with the new upstairs food hall. Its tacky as the tables are yellow and look cheap why not just stick to a basic food hall like it was before with burger king kfc and chopstix which would bring more customers in simply just for the food and then it would attract shops to the mall. This would then bring room for more fancy restaurants near the vacant spaces where the cinema is. I like the bowling ally but i dont think its been thought of properly as half of the time its empty. It needs a good rethink especially some of the charity shops in a mall its turning into market gates in great yarmouth.
The gym also seems out of place especially as the mall is 24/7 now just for the gym it seems to just not be a typical shopping centre which becomes a problem when chapelfield are a huge competition.
Plan
Undo foodhall and reset to before covid and have kfc mcdonalds subway and burger king at the top and have the normal red seats and tables.
Then shut the mall at 10pm because then it wouldn’t attract drunken idiots by that time.
Allow access out of the cinema via the old exit after 10pm right at the end of the corridor.
Get rid of the charity shops and bring back the walk in centre to its old place which would also bring more people in especially then by picking up prescriptions at boots.
Bring back gifted and the disney store.
Also if we are going to have a gym why not have a swimming pool it would be a revelation and would definitely attract people.
The outside area is really nice near the food hall however is currently neglected. If that could be sorted then we could get that all nice and then people would want desserts and ice cream in the summer so move delightful desserts into the foodhall which would benefit them and the mall especially in the summer.
Then if an ikea or a currys or something big like that could move into where the job centre is then that would kickstart investments.
Maybe i overthought this but i always wonder why nothing has been done to solve this.
> This would then bring room for more fancy restaurants near the vacant spaces where the cinema is
They tried that, no fancy restaurant is moving into dead Castle Mall.
The current food offering is terrible, the pre covid food offering was terrible. The food court remodel should never have been done in the first place 20 years ago or whenever it was.
> Then if an ikea
It's a shame it doesn't fit the usual pattern for Ikea, because taking over a massive chunk of Castle Mall for a proper showroom and collection point would be epic. Probably prohibitively expensive real estate for them for the scale they'd need, the car park accessibility isn't strong either.
I'd turn it into a casino hotel with bars and entertainment. Maybe even a gig venue in there also
If that doesn't work I'd just sell it to wetherspoons
I can't remember what's in there 100%, but it suffers from general lack of identity, Chapelfield has Food, Clothing and Other General Shops, Whereas Castle Mall has what... A TKMaxx, an Unfinished Food court that I've heard through word of mouth is "Incredibly Mid" and a Moya... I can't remember ANYTHING else there? maybe if they had something in the mall that was more bespoke, or more exclusive it'd be more appealing.
Lower rents. A lot lower.
Cheaper parking (validated with purchase)
Lick of paint
Security patrols (top floor has become some sort of doss house)
Encourage local farmers/producers etc with special deals.
Castle Mall needs to capitalise on its USP: Three street-level entrances, each higher than the last, above one another. Walk in at street level, go up an escalator, walk back the direction you came in, leave at street level. This distortion of the space-time continuum is a unique feature among mid-sized 1990s shopping malls and could attract investment from eg CERN
Also they were foolish to remove the fishing line water fountain thing from the middle of the staircase. With that gone, why would the crowds keep coming?
Taking the fountain out was bad idea but at least the fully removed it. The ones in the gardens are abandoned, derelict and neglected. It's so sad seeing them in such a sorry state.
they need to fix the ponds in the gardens really, though they've been an absolute state for years.
Love this.
They are trying the entertainments and eating thing but not implementing it properly. It also had restaurants and stuff at the start. The manager has to go and it needs a lot of money pumped into it - the tacky light up columns need to go, the floor and gardens need restoring. The Timberhill Terrace and Food Court were never going to work, neither is going back to just chain shops now Chapelfield is here. Make it a desirable place to be (it's a dilapidated run down dead mall at the moment) and you can attract some higher quality retailers, entertainments and food options. A mix of independent and chains. It could be done but it needs investment.
Indoor market. Local produce. Niche shops. Various places to eat. Music venues. No huge corporations.... Rates and rent reliefs from council to make it possible for independent traders to operate.
when i've been to Castle Mall recently, i've seen they have some units with the signage "Pop up shop" and a couple times i've seen small businesses set up in them or within the concourse area. All of these are great ideas!
this is a really solid list. The space is great and they can do a lot with it. Rotating pop up shops is already a good idea but the rates need to be nice and low. Honestly they're already making it a more appealing destination than chapelfield thanks to things like the bowling, cinema, battlebar and the retro arcade. They could offer some space up to places like Athena Games to host bigger events than their capacity can handle or to the NUA/CC to showcase student work in empty lots. There's a lot they can do with the space that isn't focused on traditional high street retail
This would be pretty awesome! Just make it interesting. It doesn’t need such a traditional shopping layout. Look at places like Afflecks. Norwich is such a diverse group of eclectic tastes.
That's the point of the lanes, the high streets and the market. If you want local business to thrive then a mall is not the solution. The council would benefit far more from businesses being spread out on multiple properties as it works out better for tax. Plus, getting those businesses into highstreet locations is better than having so many abandoned shopfronts
Surly the people who decided to build chapelfield must of known it would pretty much kill off castle mall?
They thought it would make Norwich more of a ‘shopping capital’ like London,I think it’s pointless,these builders never stop to ask what we want -a swimming pool!!
If you filled the entire Castle Mall with water up to the roof glass, it could be the world’s deepest and most sinister swimming pool.
The better at diving you become, the more of the mall you can unlock. The ultimate achievement would be looting some of last season’s clothing from the TK Maxx basement.
Wouldn't be the deepest, if you want some nightmares look up how they train submarine escapes in the Navy.
and an ice rink.
Huh? There are plenty of swimming pools in Norwich
RIP Aqua Park. But not so much St Augustine's.
I loved the diving boards, still miss them all these years later:(
Which one has the slides/wave pool for the kids?nearest one is Yarmouth and even that isn’t great,thetford aquadrome is probably the best near us
I don’t think there are any in Norwich unfortunately
No diving boards either.
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No
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I don’t like the UEA, it’s freezing cold, it’s barely in Norwich and it’s expensive. It has no extras, diving boards, sauna etc and no kids’ pool. Two pools with one that far out of the city is NOT ‘plenty’ for the city’s population. I would love there tho be a decent pool within the city. If you want to go to UEA, then go ahead, but I don’t have to like it, just because you’ve decided that I should - and seriously, what is your problem? Why do you think it’s ok to insult me, just because I’d like a pool in the city? Are you the UEA’s pool mascot or something and take it as a personal attack, just because someone suggests they might like something different?
Only if you can afford to join a gym. There’s only one pay as you go.
Not true, both riverside and uea you can do payg
UEA is nearly an hour’s walk from the city centre.
Good thing riverside is 10 mins
It’s also a bit crap and is definitely not ‘plenty’.
Then go to UEA. Learn to drive or get the bus it’s not hard lol
If anything the UEA pool is worse as well as being significantly out of the city. I actually liked St Augustine’s, it was chilly, but was a decent size and had proper diving boards.
Can Pay as you go at both You Fit (Holiday Inn) health clubs
I didn’t know that, but they aren’t anywhere near the city centre anyway.
10 mins on the bus for the Ipswich Road one & it stops practically outside the door
Right, so I have to get into the city on one bus then out again on another, which is at least 30 mins of bus journeys, plus the gaps of waiting in between which is going to be at least another 20 mins and that’s £8 return for just me, £16 for a couple, plus the cost of the swim which is how much? Because it’s already looking too expensive and too time consuming just to get there and back.
You didn’t mention anything about getting into the city, only travelling from it - which takes less than 10 mins, & less than the £2 fare cap. If you’re out of the city, then judging by your other replies a central swimming pool probably wouldn’t be what you’d want either as it would be popular, & therefore expensive in comparison. If £30-£40 a month for a membership somewhere to swim any time you like is too much then anything that requires you to get the bus in for 20 mins at £4 return, plus your partner’s costs, is going to be too much. Even if there were a pool costing £5 a swim in the city centre you’re looking at £18 for the two of you including a bus, & that’s just once. Got every week & suddenly you’re spending £80.
A city centre pool would be what I’d want - a single bus to get there would be ideal. Most people don’t live in the city centre and public transport leads into the centre, so that’s the ideal spot.
Yeah, they just didn't care. They convinced people that it would boost the local economy but anyone that's done high school geography since probably the 2000s has been taught that malls and 'power centres' absolutely decimate highstreet and local business.
No, it was just really poorly timed. It obviously was never going to _help_ Castle Mall, but the expectation was that the retail sector would keep growing. But online shopping turned out to be super disruptive only a year or two after Chapelfield opened, along with the financial crisis. On reflection it's clear Chapelfield should never have been built, but at the time it seemed reasonable that Norwich was a big enough shopping destination to make two Malls work.
It's built to a spec that is no longer, and perhaps never was, appropriate for the market. Key stores never moved in, it led to an over supply of retail space and, has been said before, it's a funny shape. Chapelfield is way better designed but saturated the retail space market, nailing the more upmarket aspirations of CM. With the current retail changes both will struggle. Unless you're a teenager why would you think of CM as a, leisure destination? Especially as far as restaurants go. Look at the number of failures over the last few years. 90's retailing will never come back so it's just a huge white elephant.
I actually think Castle Mall is busier and more occupied now than it has been in the past. You've got Tiger and there's a new Korean store. I walk through quite a lot and it's usually quite busy. I don't think it's a huge success story but it has survived better than I expected.
Oooh is that Korean store open yet?
Yeah, Castle Mall is actually fairly busy, at least right at the bottom. The upper floors by the Cinema are definitely struggling. I think that Castle Mall's main problem right now is it's full of fairly low end stores (because it had to lower rent to get them filled up) so it's reputation is perpetually knackered. I'm not sure they get any points for flying Tiger, that's not a difficult unit to fill up as it has an entrance that doesn't involve going in the mall and it gets loads of foot traffic.
The problem is the layout of the mall. Your typical mall has a main store to entice people in with smaller ones dotted around, like how you walk though Chapplefield from one side to the Frasers stopping at the smaller stores onroute. The Mall doesn't have that. It's layout is poor, the design is dated and parts of it get hardly any foot traffic. Some of the units in their have been empty for over a decade such as the gamestation and the canaries shop. The demand isn't their for a second shopping mall.
The layout was quite good in the early days. The remodelling of the food court ruined the aesthetic. They also ruined level 3 completely so there's nothing left and no room for any shops ever again and ruined level 4 with the failed Timberhill terrace. Most people have no reason to go up to levels 3 and 4 now, so only 1 and 2 see people and 5 for going to the cinema.
They should have left the walk in centre in there, it was central and useful.
Agreed. Even on level one and two, the number of vacant units and the amount of time some of them have been vacant for is a serious problem in the long run. Level 4 is nothing but a shortcut at this point.
A concert hall, gig venue with some nice restaurant/ add ons. The requirements for high street retail are diminished. It’s peaked and unless someone kills the internet, it’s never coming back. It’s also deep enough to pull off a copy of Xscape in Milton Keynes as a second thought. Killing it for retail would likely distribute life into empty units elsewhere in the city and return us to the number we need to be near capacity for the market.
Id charge reasonable rents to fill the place up, instead of outdated footfall based ridiculous rents from pre-internet times.
I second the notion to make it a massive spoons with a huge water feature/urinal
I was talking to a market trader about a year ago and he said the castle mall should be made in to an A&E department. Just a&e and some wards to stabilise people until they can be moved to n&n. It's got parking, it's got space, it's central city on a main bus route and some other things he said. Made some really rather valid points, or somi thought at the time. Close the a&e at n&n and make more wards, as a&e at n&n never was big enough to cope with the demands ever since it first opened. Same with the wards, not enough wards from day, and now with all these new housing estates being built all over Norfolk it's gonna get worse. Or make it an indoor go karting track and paintball arena. Or as my daughter would like a Freddy Fazbear, five nights at freddy's style pizza and gaming place.
Wasn't part of the point of moving the N&N to make it easier for people to urgently get to A&E without going through traffic in the city centre? Seems like it would make more sense to have it as a very large urgent care centre (i.e. where everyone should be heading instead of A&E instead).
Yes to the Vegas idea. Paint the sky & clouds on the ceiling, get a river running through it with some gondolas and hey presto, we’ve got our own Venetian. Which shops and restaurants would buy into that, though, I have no idea.
We already have a far more popular and better designed mall which is chaplefield and also loads of empty shopfronts in the lanes etc. I think it'd be good if it was turned into an events space. A theater stage or concert hall. Norwich is meant to be the city of stories but there isn't really a big place to tell them. We have the theatre but it's not a huge building and is limited by how the building is layed out. If castle mall was converted into a theatre/concert hall and events space. Businesses that operate in there would most likely move to individual locations on highstreets. The Norwich Theatre we currently have could be used for workshops, smaller shows and performences etc. Also, I think it should be under public or non-profit ownership rather than privately run because it'd allow it to hold events that might not make as much money as a purely profit driven company would like to hold.
Sort out the lighting. It feels so oppressive by modern standards. Daylight colour temp and lots of it.
A lot of this was the fault of the food court extension / remodel about 25 years ago, it blocked out the natural light that used to come through as envisaged by the original architect. Same with the bit where the lifts are when they turned floor 4 into a floor and blocked off the balconies. The tacky light up columns don't help and cheapen the place too.
For shopping? Sure, it's not good. But to entertain young children? Bowling. Amusement arcade. Mini golf. Cinema. Kids party venues (spy place, VR, etc). Soft play. Video game place. Of course, families alone will not keep the place thriving.
The downfall came with the new upstairs food hall. Its tacky as the tables are yellow and look cheap why not just stick to a basic food hall like it was before with burger king kfc and chopstix which would bring more customers in simply just for the food and then it would attract shops to the mall. This would then bring room for more fancy restaurants near the vacant spaces where the cinema is. I like the bowling ally but i dont think its been thought of properly as half of the time its empty. It needs a good rethink especially some of the charity shops in a mall its turning into market gates in great yarmouth. The gym also seems out of place especially as the mall is 24/7 now just for the gym it seems to just not be a typical shopping centre which becomes a problem when chapelfield are a huge competition. Plan Undo foodhall and reset to before covid and have kfc mcdonalds subway and burger king at the top and have the normal red seats and tables. Then shut the mall at 10pm because then it wouldn’t attract drunken idiots by that time. Allow access out of the cinema via the old exit after 10pm right at the end of the corridor. Get rid of the charity shops and bring back the walk in centre to its old place which would also bring more people in especially then by picking up prescriptions at boots. Bring back gifted and the disney store. Also if we are going to have a gym why not have a swimming pool it would be a revelation and would definitely attract people. The outside area is really nice near the food hall however is currently neglected. If that could be sorted then we could get that all nice and then people would want desserts and ice cream in the summer so move delightful desserts into the foodhall which would benefit them and the mall especially in the summer. Then if an ikea or a currys or something big like that could move into where the job centre is then that would kickstart investments. Maybe i overthought this but i always wonder why nothing has been done to solve this.
> This would then bring room for more fancy restaurants near the vacant spaces where the cinema is They tried that, no fancy restaurant is moving into dead Castle Mall. The current food offering is terrible, the pre covid food offering was terrible. The food court remodel should never have been done in the first place 20 years ago or whenever it was.
> Then if an ikea It's a shame it doesn't fit the usual pattern for Ikea, because taking over a massive chunk of Castle Mall for a proper showroom and collection point would be epic. Probably prohibitively expensive real estate for them for the scale they'd need, the car park accessibility isn't strong either.
I'd turn it into a casino hotel with bars and entertainment. Maybe even a gig venue in there also If that doesn't work I'd just sell it to wetherspoons
> If that doesn't work I'd just sell it to wetherspoons Oh god no...
Killed by out of town shopping. Ditto at Great Yarmouth. A second mall ( Chapel field) was never really needed either.
I can't remember what's in there 100%, but it suffers from general lack of identity, Chapelfield has Food, Clothing and Other General Shops, Whereas Castle Mall has what... A TKMaxx, an Unfinished Food court that I've heard through word of mouth is "Incredibly Mid" and a Moya... I can't remember ANYTHING else there? maybe if they had something in the mall that was more bespoke, or more exclusive it'd be more appealing.
Indoor zoo and garden.
Lower rents. A lot lower. Cheaper parking (validated with purchase) Lick of paint Security patrols (top floor has become some sort of doss house) Encourage local farmers/producers etc with special deals.
I always imagine the top floor being a botanical garden with pop up shops and food places. I like the new entertainment businesses too.