Monday 25 June 2007

Does anyone know?

Less than a week until the official re-opening of the town centre, with loads of street entertainment promised, and most shops open on Sunday - with lots of special offers - but does anyone know about it?
The Council should have produced posters for all the shops to put in their windows. The scant details on the Council's website are hidden away several layers deep - why haven't they overlaid the home page with a special page advertising the weekend's events? What about the Echo: there was talk of a special advertising feature, but that clearly isn't happening. The tv ads are on, but why isn't there an overlay on the final shots announcing this weekend's special events?

Is the money running dry?
It's taken an age for handrails to be installed on the steps.
And has anyone wondered why they suddenly installed a load of bollards along the edge of what was the old High Row pavement? It's because they've discovered a lot of the shops on High Row have cellars which protude out under the pavement. So they've had to install bollards to keep delivery vehicles away from the shop front, in case they fall into a black hole!
It would be great to be able to move on and get trading successfully again, but you have to keep going back and looking at this bland and unexciting scheme the Labour Party has imposed on us and wonder at the way they've managed it from start to finish.

4 comments:

Mike said...

I'd wondered what those bollards were for. As I went along High Row, I kept changing my mind: to stop vans blocking entrance to a Yard?; to stop ram raids on cash machines? Cellars weren't on my list.

I actually quite like the finished scheme, but mainly because it doesn't distract from the buildings. Which probably means it is bland.

The new bins look cheap, though. As do the new direction signposts - there's an old one down by the ring road near the crossing to the Magistrates Court which looks so much better.

Anonymous said...

I don't mind the signs myself, but it must've been an asthmatic sloth who had the job of working out the walking times. Unless my memory is playing tricks on me I'm sure I saw one on Prebend Row at the weekend telling me that it was an 8 minute walk to the library.

I can only assume that they stopped off at the Red Lion for a swift half on the way?

Mike said...

The times on the bike signposts are similarly pesimistic.

Anonymous said...

I agree that the scheme is bland in the extreme, a sea of grey (chinese) granite.
Of more concern is the actual design. Has anything yet been done to address the much publicised concerns of the blind community?

Also, was the weekends flooding made worse by the lack of kerbs/gulleys to direct/control the flow of water?
I understand that the weekends events were so extreme flooding was inevitable, so not point scoring, just interested in whether the new design made matters worse than they needed to be.