The Ellesmere Centre

The Ellesmere Centre is starting to improve. The whole place has been refurbished and new parts have been built to attract that lacking custom and shopping vibe in Walkden.
Tesco was completely rebuilt and revamped — though it does feel very clinical and a bit like the Hive out of resident evil at night…
It’s already attracted new custom — Costa Coffee — which is great! They seem to be doing fairly well too. There are always people inside and hopefully this will inspire more custom from other businesses too.
The banks have moved and now have very shiny new spaces; HSBC, Lloyds, Halifax, Santander.
The market hall is also revamped with a bigger and better area. There’s a good selection of stalls from handbags, to a card shop, to a clothes shop, to a fancy dress shop, to a Polish food stall, to a pet items stall AND best of all… the old school sweet shop!
However, it does cost 10p or 20p to go to the toilet but they are well looked after!
A list of other shops/​facilities around the centre;
JD
Opticians
Electricians
Shoe maker
St.Anns Hospice
Greggs
Computer shop
Quality Save
Nails
Hairdressers
Carpet shop
Boots
Phone shop
Key Cutters
Subway
Tanning shop
Dominoes
Betting Shop
Scents/​Candles
School clothes
Aldi — opening this week!
With hopefully more to come!

This place could be great but unfortunately, there are too many vacant shops.
I moved to the area in Oct 2011 and there hasn’t been very much improvement in the way of more retail outlets!!!
Walkden could be a great shopping place but compared to the likes of Leigh, it fails miserably!
I am just hoping that things pick up and whatever the problem is (with regard to all the vacant units) it is somehow resolved, i’e, maybe reduce the rents, as it’s obviously not attracting many outlets.

There isn’t much to do here there is a big tesco a post office boots quality save a couple of designer shops handful of charity shops ummm dry cleaners and key cutters and stuff like that nice fruit and veg shop and errr peacocks a holiday shop think its Thomas cook? card shops in fact I think there is more than I realised! Well anyway its not that great if you want to go clothes shopping (except the designer shops) but there is a lift and its got ramps etc and it has a fantastic café called lowrys! Oh and barbers and hairdressers banks and oooh just outside there is a fantastic bag shop sells gorgeous designer bags! JJB and um that other sports shop think its JD? Blockbuster but that might have closed? Subway macdonalds and kfc, BIG FREE CARPARK