I believe that it is coming back, Mark, and will come back more - doing your shopping at smaller, more local outlets rather than opting for a "Leisure Experience / Retail Therapy" trek to some glitzy, out-of-town, golfcart required to cope with the sheer acreage, Consumer World.
As for local tackleshops, I sadly had to drop mine, once a very fine shop run by one of England's greatest coarse, float and barbel fishers, in 2007 after well over forty years of visiting it often, spending regular (and sometimes some big-ticket) money and generally offering and giving it and its staff a lot of my affection and word-of-mouth-to-other-Anglers support - serially cheeked, then finally so grossly insulted by a shopboy (whom some local Spessie Denizens and Angling Travel Monsters had clearly nobbled) that many another man would not only only have summarily leapt the counter and pulped him on the spot but also smashed the place up on his way out. Not me, however, not being into such chestbeating stuff.
I walk past the place now and again, thinking of the old days and its Great Angler owner, when it really was somewhere to visit, chat and shop. Pity.