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Three months after relocating to their new premises in the newly completed building that represents phase 2 of the redevelopment of NCGM, we have been asking traders how the facilities have been treating them so far. Here are the thoughts of Rob Burton, Rushton’s of The Chefs’ Greengrocer
“We are more than happy,” said Rob. “From our point of view, it was all very well planned. The only thoughts we had before we moved really were ‘why is it taking so long! We were impatient because we could see the potential and not moving was only stopping us from doing things we wanted to do.”
The new units are a better shape for Rushton’s, he said. “Because the Market has developed over the last 50 years, our old units were a bit of a rabbit warren. Now we have an open plan space that is truly fit for purpose, which makes it a lot easier to do what we need to do. We’ve changed for the better because the premises allow it. It’s far more efficient and we can now encourage our customers to come here.
“The biggest single reason for the success of our move though, has been the people working here. The two most important things for us were being able to provide our staff with good facilities and have our own toilets. Everyone showed great patience and understood that it would be better, while accepting that there could be some pain in the short term.
“For some of us, it was incredibly full on and we’ve still not quite got back to our day jobs yet,” explained Rob. “There are a lot of moving parts in a move and the object of the exercise was to get it the least wrong possible. You’ll never get it 100% right – there will always be things you find out and fine tune when you move in. It’s a case of ticking off things on a long list and it’s important not to get frustrated with the last 10%, because they will take far longer than the 90%.”
The timescale to fit out the units was quite tight and stressful at times, he admitted. “But where we definitely benefited from being in phase 2 of the redevelopment was that there were learnings from phase I and we didn’t have some of the issues they had. I hope the firms moving in phase 3 will see that benefit too.”
