Former Press chief reporter Mike Laycock on Coney Street plans

It was once the bustling heart of the city centre, where every retail giant wanted a presence: BHS, Woolworths, Boots, Dorothy Perkins, Burtons, WH Smiths – they and many more household names were all there.

It was the street you headed for when you wanted to buy clothes, in the days before out-of-town shopping centres and websites.

It was the street where if any unit fell vacant, it would quickly be snapped up and reopened.

The outside of the former Evening Press and Yorkshire Herald offices in Coney Street (Image: Archive) It was even the home of The Press – then the Yorkshire Evening Press – when I started work at the paper in late 1984.

The newsprint paper rolls were taken along the river by barge and delivered into the back of the building.

It seemed unthinkable then that Coney Street should ever look anything less than its prosperous best.

And yet over the decades, it declined and by the late 2010s and early 20s, I was carrying out surveys showing the street had ten, eleven, even sometimes a dozen shops standing empty and often boarded up.

Mike Laycock during his days at The Press (Image: Newsquest) Two of the flagships, BHS and Woolworth’s, had long gone, with Boots moving across the street from its old site into the old Woollies store but BHS remaining vacant for years.

The Press had long since moved out of the now pedestrianised street and shifted down to Walmgate, where there was much easier access for its fleet of delivery vans.

I remember taking a photograph in Coney Street at ‘high noon’ during one of the pandemic lockdowns, with not a single shopper in sight. The deserted street was eerie and seemed a little symbolic of how the future might look.

Coney Street at noon during lockdown, with barely a shopper in sight (Image: Mike Laycock) Coney Street seemed to be going the way of other traditional high streets across the country, following the loss of trade to out-of-town shopping centres with their free parking, or to buying products online.

And yet this was York, with throngs of tourists and shoppers almost guaranteed to return once the pandemic was over.

Didn’t Coney Street just need a rethink to be returned to its former glory and capitalize on its underused assets?

• Read more: Approved: developers ‘delighted’ as Coney Street masterplan gets green light

In particular, its wasted river frontage, which primarily consisted of the ugly backs of stores – the only stretch of river in the city centre where you couldn’t walk along the banks.

There had been pockets of positive development in Coney Street over the years, for example the imaginative conversion of part of the old Press building into the City Screen cinema complex, with its balcony and bars overlooking the river.

'Full glory of the riverside is to be revealed and utilized'

Now, it seems, the full glory of the riverside is to be revealed and utilized as part of a truly comprehensive and quite remarkable redevelopment by the Helmsley Group.

The huge Boots building is to be demolished altogether to provide a new access to the waterside.

Large numbers of new student flats are to be built – perhaps for the residents least likely to be disturbed by drunken revellers in the area on Friday and Saturday nights!

How the Coney Street riverside area could look (Image: Supplied) Questions and concerns still remain. For example, we MUST keep a decent Boots in the area – but where will they be able to open a big enough replacement store, temporary and then permanent? Maybe a quick move back into its old home just across the street?

But this imaginative project does seem to present a fantastic opportunity to revitalize Coney Street and make it fit for the 21st century.