Wheatsheaf Shopping Centre

The Wheatsheaf is one of the smaller shopping centres in Rochdale, to join the Rochdale Exchange and high street, but on my visit it certainly wasn’t the «best shopping centre in town» as the website makes out.
The wheatsheaf is quite a big space with 3 floors, but still it isn’t a very nice shopping centre, with not many places left, staff walking around or even signage.
This shopping centre does have a lift, but it is confusing and they isn’t enough signage to say where is where, and it is hard to go up and down the floors as it seems not worth to even come in here, due to a lack of shops.
On my visit, it was reasonably late on a Monday evening, but still the shops were open, but the atmosphere was terrible, it was as quiet as a library and simply not a nice place to shop, with empty spaces and only few, large shops such as Wilko and Argos.
Parking here is quite easy enough with a large amount of parking of course being in Rochdale city centre, with most of them being free of course, but still when in Rochdale centre, this certainly is a place you will only visit to go to one of the stores like Wilko and Argos, and when you do, it certainly feels like an inconvenience. Ryan C has got it spot on, it is simply an arndale for Argos and Wilkinsons, with a few other additions. I can’t warrant giving any more than one star for the Wheatsheaf sadly.

I haven’t stepped foot in Rochdale Town Centre for over 10 years.
The last time I came here was because ALL: Sports (remember them ?) we’re a man down & thus I had to up sticks from the Oldham Store and make my way there.
This also was the 1^st time I had stepped into «The Wheatsheaf Shopping Centre».
Wow, what a dump.
It’s basically a indoor shopping centre for Wilkinsons & Argos as they are the only 2 stores that I ventured into due to the others being either being empty or at that moment I time I neither wanted my nails doing or my eyebrows threaded.
See ya in another 10 years

I have a major downer on the centre of my home town, and anyone who has had to spend any time shopping there will know where i’m coming from.
I always find it odd that there are still people who go to Rochdale town centre by choice, especially when you consider that we have Manchester, Bolton, Bury and Oldham just a short bus ride away. All of which provide a better experience than Rochdale.
For me The Wheatsheaf Centre suffers from the same problems as the Exchange Centre, namely that they put too may BIG sized units in there, thus you will only attract the bigger stores (Yawn), and of course that means bigger rents and less chance of Independants opening up.
When it opened which was either 1990 or 91 it was quite a good addition to the town centre but it didn’t take long to hit a few snags, the first one was the fact that they put a café in it that was almost bigger than any of the shops in there and thus it always looked empty even when they had customers. It didn’t last long.
Another problem it has (One which isn’t their fault) is shops that closed down. The first major one to go was when BHS went out of business, but they got lucky because Wilkos soon moved into what was a large hole to fill, and of course T J Hughes went t*ts up last year which has left an even bigger hole, one which I fear they will never fill because nobody will want to pay the crippling rents (5 years ago Littlewoods closed down in the Exchange Centre and is still empty, and last year Macdonalds had to close MACDONALDS!!! because they couldn’t afford the rent!!!)
At the moment a lot of things are being built in Rochdale town centre, the Metro Link (Nice, a good way of going elsewhere) is coming, a new council office building (Yawn), a new bus station (much needed) and some new shops. The new shops are being sold to us as a bigger M&S and a Debenhams, thanks for that, give us shops that everybody else has, that’ll get people flooding back to our Centre.
A Councillor put forward plans to turn one of our larger stores into mini units of Indie shops a-​la Afflecks or the old Corn Exchange, he got shot down by eveyone else. And that is the problem with our Town Centre, the people who are charged with running it.
Still, we do have a lovely Town Hall :)