n idea to turn Reid Street into a shopper-friendly pedestrian-only area would only work if there is sufficient car parking for shoppers in the nearby area.

So says Peter Cooper as he prepares to open the new A.S. Cooper & Sons store on Front and Reid Streets.

He sees the proposed new business hotel at Par-La-Ville Road car park, and its suggested three underground decks of car parking as a solution that would make it possible for Reid Street to become traffic free.

?Until they can find parking in a nearby area, in the vicinity of Reid Street, then from a retailer?s point of view it would be disastrous to make Reid Street pedestrianised,? said Mr. Cooper. ?I hear the new hotel at Par-La-Ville Road is going to have a lot of car parking and that?s a major step forward and that should be done first before the pedestrianisation.?

The idea of pedestrianising Reid Street has been mooted in the past by the Corporation of Hamilton and the late Mayor Jay Bluck. The loss of the famous Trimingham and Smiths retail names from Front Street, and the planned replacement of Trimingham?s with a six-storey office block by Bank of Bermuda, has changed the face of the Island?s central shopping experience. But shop owners still have plenty to offer residents and visitors and Mr. Cooper has confidence that even though Bermudians love flying to the States to stock up on purchases, there is enough of an on-Island demand for Hamilton to remain a buoyant market place for shop owners.

Explaining why his new flagship store is only 16,000 sq ft making it is less than half the size of the former store, Mr. Cooper said: ?We did intent to have something smaller. The whole retail scene changed when Trimingham and Smiths went out of business and we were aware that was about to happen.

?The building was structured in a way that it would be a smaller operation. Trimingham and Smiths had an enormous amount of market share. When they closed that market share dried up, but most of the products they sold have been taken up by other retailers.?

The small satellite shops that A.S. Cooper opened to sell its products while the main store was being demolished and rebuilt are to continue as part of the local Cooper family?s shopping empire, which is now in its 110th year.

Commenting on the soon to be built Bank of Bermuda office block at the site of the former Trimingham store, Mr. Cooper said: ?It will add customer traffic to that area, and pedestrian traffic is always good for retailers. People will be coming out of the bank and immediately be next to shops.?

And on the Bermudian habit of going to the US on shopping excursions, he added: ?There will always be people going overseas to buy, I?m sure that will continue and Bermudians do get bargains in the big US sales, but we are selling clothes here at normal US prices and cosmetics, perfumes, fine gifts and alike actually cost less in Bermuda than in the States.?