We need to breathe life into Sunderland
It's more money down the drain if Sunderland Council thinks its proposals for a £1million makeover will transform Sunderland's Market Square into a "bustling public space."
So far proposals include:
- new street lights (an unnecessary extravagance with blazes in Blandford Street lighting up the sky)
- new paving with feature lighting (what chance they will be on, like Sunniside's elusive fountains and LEDs?)
- removal of dead or dying trees (presumably killed off by copious quantities of urine)
- moveable seats which can be arranged for different purposes (no one wants to sit there)
- removal of litter bins (they won't be missed, no one uses them).
It's all a drop in the ocean – a paltry sop to what our city centre really needs to stem the tide of the well-heeled waltzing off to Newcastle and Durham, rather than set foot in Sunderland.
Come off it, what difference will the so-called transformation really make? None.
And Lee Martin, leader of the Tory group on the council isn't alone when he says: "Our city centre makes you want to weep".
When The Bridges was built, all the main players naturally moved there, while our main streets, unlike Newcastle, withered and died.
No wonder so many are shutting up shop at the rate of knots – one in six are empty in Sunderland.
A revamp? That's what Newcastle does so brilliantly with 170m spent on renovating Eldon Square over the last five years and its latest piece de resistance, the newly-opened knock-your-socks-off shopping mall with a four-storey, flagship Debenhams and the North East's first Apple store.
And there's more to come, with 2m bringing the rest of the centre up to standard and new floor tiles going in this month.
Talking of tiles – or the lack of them on the corner of High Street, opposite Mackie's corner – Martin O'Neill is lucky to still be in business given the pavement outside his sweet shop has been closed for seven weeks because council contractors say they are waiting for paving slabs from China.
What a wanton waste of time shipping paving slabs 5,000 miles from the Far East.
Until there is inward investment we can't hold a candle to Newcastle, which is forging ahead as a prime UK destination for shopping, culture and entertainment.
We can't even live up to our city status. Listen to what Barry Rowland, chief executive of Newcastle City Council believes on redevelopment: "The commitment that the private sector has to this is the thing that will differentiate the city now and in the future.
"They are taking some risk, but we are sharing the risk and that will put us in a stronger position.
"If we're not going to take a risk in our city, who is?"
Where are our risk takers? Well, I'm one as stated in my recent manifesto following the suggestion from one Echo reader – and he's not a lone voice now – that if Sunderland ever had an elected Mayor I take on the role.
It wouldn't cost me a 1m to transform Market Square.
As promised I would indeed follow in the footsteps of the Mayor of Clochmerle, that fictitious French village – and erect a "pissoir," a gentleman's convenience and one for the ladies, housed in a pyramid modelled in the Parisienne style – the Pyramid du Louvre.
It would be perfect for deterring any mountaineering morons.
With money in my back pocket – and this would be a feasibility exercise – I would impregnate Greggs' bags with seeds which will sprout into sweet smelling Candytuft to attract the butterflies.
I jest not – Marks & Spencer this week launched the first chocolate wrapper that grows into fragrantly, fantastic Candytuft (the Iberis umbellata Rose Cardinal), flowers which attract comma, green-veined white, large skipper and small tortoiseshell butterflies.
And with everything coming up roses and Candytuft in Market Square, I would launch a new attraction – New York style open-topped horse-drawn carriages, so popular in Central Park, to graciously trot on from Mowbray Park, through showpiece Sunniside Gardens with fountains-a-playing to Sunderland's Pyramid du Louvre.
Here free entertainment would be the daily pilloring in the stocks of benefits cheats, the pyjama brigade and Asbo defaulters.
Talk about putting us on the map.
There'd be so many flocking here we'd have to open up all our boarded up shops...
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Friday 10 February 2012
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