News reaches us of another grand "regeneration" project from St Modwen: the destruction of Farnborough town centre.
According to a detailed UK Indymedia article, Farnborough used to have a viable town centre, a large number of small independent businesses, many family owned, many had been in the town for 30 years a more (sound familiar?!). The town centre now lies derelict, little more than a ghost town. About ten years ago Farnborough town centre was bought by KPI (apparently a Kuwaiti-financed front-company for St Modwen). Last summer half the town centre was demolished. During the demolition and other work , the remaining shops have regularly had their services cut, electricity and telephones cut, access blocked. All of which has hit businesses. Within the last few months, more shops and businesses have pulled out or been driven out - the catalogue of local businesses lost according to the Indymedia story is quite tragic.
See the picture below for St Modwen's broken promises... No amount of pretty pictures on hoardings boasting the new shops coming to Farborough can disguise the fact that the town centre has lost all these local businesses - and that in the current financial climate there is no guarantee that the new shops will be built at all.
Join the fight to make sure this doesn't happen to Walthamstow town centre - please see the Join Us section at the top right of this page.
Wednesday 23 April 2008
Here's one they regenerated earlier...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I must own up to having no love for the High Street or the market. It is tacky, boring and dirty. There have been a number of proposals by the Council to "up grade" the market, but like so much else nothing has come of those plans.
However, what is proposed for the Arcade site is unlikely, in my view, to complement or enhance the market. I do not believe that the "prestige development" will act as a magnet to attract high quality retail outlets; leading to the High Street being regenerated.
In my view a less disruptive and cheaper approach to improving the centre of Walthamstow is for the Council to restrict the type of retail and food outlets in the High Street and Hoe Street and actively encourage a diversity of businesses.
I see no vision in what is being proposed. No sense of how the new development reflects Walthamstow's roots or its future. It is simply a block of concrete with space for some living accommodation and a large retail area. Is the Council's view of the borough and its residents so restricted, so limited and so dreary?
I sense that the Council is panicked by the development in Stratford. They fear that its new centre will attract residents and other shoppers away from our town centre. If so the development will do little to stop that drift. We should not be (extremely poorly) mimicking Stratford. We should be offering an alternative approach. More local, less national brands. Possibly a less frenetic, more traditional experience. But this approach was suggested by the Council some years back but they appeared to have lacked the courage or imagination; I don't think cost would necessarily have been a hurdle.
Walthamstow has been vandalised often enough. The Arcade has been vacant for a number of years - a pause to re-think - and in the process turning that most valuable site into a real amenity - would not I believe be disastrous. Thereby allowing a less brutal, less disruptive, more humane vision to emerge.
I have been a resident in Walthamstow for 15 years. I have heard of many regeneration plans put forward by the council in that time.
Apart from the Selbourne Walk mall, 'town square', and a rather badly executed revamp of the bus/ tube station(who decided on those long stairs from the tube rather than an escalator and narrow walkway to the furthest bus stops?)I have seen little improve in the main shopping area.
The main market road is like a ghost town out of shopping hours. It is lined by budget shops and charity stores. There are few decent shops at all, (there used to be an M&S, but that closed down.) Our cinema that I used to regularly use has long gone, left boarded up and rotting. Many parks now seem neglected. Specialty shops have gone to be replaced over much of the Borough with fast food outlets or at best, average quality small shops.
I am not impressed by the unfulfilled promises of new libraries or multi screen cinemas or craft/cafe society that have at times been promised by the council. Why now should I believe that more housing in a tower block, plus a big store and maybe a cinema tacked on will improve the situation?
Have they no vision or the capability to oversee a real regeneration of Walthamstow, that would enhance the quality of life for the residents of and visitors to E17?
I think the answer to that is in the St.Modwen plan for the Arcade site that they supposedly endorse. The answer appears to be no!
In refernce to the situation in Farnborough, I can confirm, having visited the area numerous times for work purposes only, that it is in fact an absolute hole and anything that St Modwen do to it, including knocking the whole town down will drastically improve it!
Reading pages and pages of people writing misinformed and frankly outrageous comments based on the opinions of a few makes me sick, and I shall discontinue my activities on this site now. There is no worse position in life than that of a NIMBY (not in my back yard) and I hope you all enjoy life down there right at the bottom.
Urban regeneration is here to stay, GET OVER IT, stop complaining and embrace the capitalist ways of this nation, it is far too late to try and change the path now!
Well done jph. A different view - just what is needed. Not that I agree with you one iota.
A couple of points. What is wrong with NIMBYism. If you can't try affect what happens in your backyard we all might as well pack up and go home (Oh sorry, you've built on it).
It's fallacious to argue that if something is awful anything replacing it is better.
I agree capitalism is a great engine for change and improvement. Much of what the Victorian capitalists built is what I'd like to preserve. But worryingly whereas they got it right - today we appear to get it wrong again and again and again. We just don't seem to learn.
Personally, I'd ban neon signs, double glazing, non London stock bricks, mock leading and require anyone who buys a Victorian house to ensure it keeps it Victorian-ness. But, I appreciate that's a bit excessive, so I'm willing to compromise.
I'd shut up if the Council would give some thought to a coherent plan to ensure that Walthamstow doesn't lose its historic build. That it doesn't act as if it wouldn't know a good design if it sat up and saluted it. And didn't spent all its time and resources telling us what it would do in 10 years time but muddles through from day to day.
So well done jph.. you've got my gander up. But of course you won't see this since you've left the building.
Post a Comment