Tragic state of Sunderland, the lost city
We're off the map for folks coming here with Sunderland named the fourth least visited city in the UK. I'm not surprised. Why would anyone want to come here?
Sunderland has too little to offer us, never mind anyone else. We're a lost city, says the recent Travelodge report.
Most definitely we're lost to ourselves and so at risk of being lost to future generations of travellers.
It's a stark warning that our council leader, Paul Watson, had the nerve to dismiss, blinkered to the condition of Sunderland.
But how different it might all have been if the Echo's April Fool of 1992 had ever gone ahead.
It was so convincing it incensed some readers who were convinced it was a waste of council cash while certain councillors criticised the Echo for making the plan appear too real...
Under the headline "Shoppers' Dream For City Riverside", we showed how a multi-million pound transformation of the city centre at the riverside would turn Sunderland into the biggest shopping and leisure complex in Europe.
Thousands of jobs would be created, and the huge shopping development, to rival the Metrocentre, would bring worldwide publicity to Britain's newest and most ambitious city.
But the Echo spoof warned that bitter opposition was expected to covering in the river Wear from the Wearmouth Bridge upstream as far as Wearmouth Colliery with a tunnel for the river to flow through and a new land bridge created.
Of course it never happened. And so much more needs to happen. That's why nobody comes here. That's why businesses are going to the wall in the city centre.
Even if anyone was coming here we haven't got a decent hotel for them to stay in.
The Travelodge? I don't think so. And it's a bitter irony that it should be the one to conduct such a survey given its Low Row lodge is so badly sited and was ever allowed to be built slam, bang in front of our gracious Minster, obliterating its magnificence.
And it's not a pretty sight what I saw outside the Minster this week – a pair of men's boxers, pink leopard skin, dangling on the church railing and blowing in the breeze.
That sums up Sunderland city centre – dirty with time standing still like the Minster clock and each face telling a different time and perhaps stopped for all time.
And as for the oases in the city – the Winter Gardens' windows are filthy and doubtless haven't been cleaned since the Queen's opening.
What we do indeed have going for us is that within an hour you can be somewhere else – places of beauty by the sea and inland. Which begs the question: Where are we?
We're well and truly down in the dumps... nothing new and no change there, sold down the river by a city council that has firmly put us on the map for all the wrong reasons.
And that's no April Fool and no laughing matter.
Email to a friend
Print this page- Sunderland striker Campbell fresh to face Middlesbrough
- Sunderland’s astonishing rise even surprising Martin O’Neill
- Middlesbrough 1 Sunderland 2 (aet): O’Neill relieved to avoid shoot-out lottery as Sessegnon wins it
- Martin O’Neill defends David Meyler after criticism from Tony Pulis
- Kieran Richardson says there is plenty more to come from James McClean
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Sunderland
Friday 10 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: -3 C to 2 C
Wind Speed: 15 mph
Wind direction: South
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 1 C to 3 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: South west
