LEWIS’S insists its decision to shut up shop is purely linked to leaseholder issues, writes business reporter Neil Hodgson.

But the inexorable decline in Lime Street’s retail quarter must have played a part in the impending loss of the iconic store.

Owner David Thompson blamed the effect the city’s 2005 “Big Dig” had in deterring customers visiting the then-Owen Owen store, which plunged into receivership two years later. Mr Thompson rescued the store and stabilised the business.

But since then, the £1bn Liverpool One shopping centre has exerted a gravitational pull on consumers towards the city’s waterfront.

And perhaps more damaging has been the relocation of the equally iconic Rapid Hardware store, Lewis’s immediate neighbour in Renshaw Street, to the former George Henry Lee store in Church Street, which will have taken a significant chunk of shopping footfall from the Lime Street area, effectively transforming it into a retail ghost town compared with the bustling Liverpool One.

Liverpool Chamber of Commerce chief executive Jack Stopforth rightly insists Lewis’s fate reinforces the urgent need for the proposed regeneration of Renshaw Street and Lime Street.