Monday 19 January 2015

Purple Flag will restore some balance to City spend.

As a wee boy growing up in Glenrothes, in central Scotland, our family lived on an estate that was designed as part of a number “New Towns” built to house the overspill of the redevelopment of Glasgow’s infamous tenements.

These new town planners had designed self sufficient housing estates that contained the entire infrastructure needed for modern family living in 1960’s Scotland. This included compact modern housing, a “village green” type grassed play space, secure garage lockups for your modern car, local shops, primary schools, a post office, lots of open space and one of my most enduring memory’s was a state of the art playground with new shiny brightly painted playground equipment that was in my mind the best in the world.

The playground that serviced Cromarty Court was on the way to my school, Rimbleton Primary, and was the most wonderful of places to start an adventure from. Included in this playground was one huge monolithic slide (or "shoot" as we called this in Scotland) that was in my eyes simply the highest structure I would ever have to climb, a series of three swings, the essential (yet lethal) brightly painted steel and wooden roundabout, but the most impressive of all these items was the yellow and blue seesaw that sat at the very heart of the playground. This to me was the best of the best of all the things to play on and partly due to the fact that a fall from the top of the shoot one sunny day put me off this once favourite play structure.

One of my many memories of playing on the seesaw was of course seeing just how many of your friends you could get standing on this balance beam on what would today be seen as a health and safety on no. Unfortunately, the once common seesaw has been replaced by those wobbly and springy ducks, hens and elephant contraptions that break ALL your teeth or give you children whiplash.

One abiding memory that will stick with me forever would be when one of my, shall I saw heavier playmates, would sit at one end of the seesaw and I would be left dangling one hundred feet in the air helplessly bumping up and down on the seat to try and bring my end of the seesaw back down to terra firma. On the odd occasion, when I would be feeling brave, I would push myself over the brightly painted safety handle and edge inch by inch towards the central pivot point and through the powers of some mystic magic seesaw fairy I would somehow make myself heavier thus levelling out the weight distribution and bringing the seesaw back down to ground. I would later learn in Physics classes, at Bell Baxter secondary school, that at five years old I was in fact implementing one of Newton’s many laws, which to this day I still do not understand and so I will be sticking to my fairy theory.

It was this memory that sprung to mind in early December when I was in the City Centre and several businesses from the George’s Street, Gladstone Street and O’Connell Street area of the City stopped me and asked why there were no additional Christmas lights etc in these areas when compared to Christmas of 2013. I believed that the reason is due to the fact that the ice rink this year had been moved and was set up further down The Quay, towards Rice Bridge, and that this meant there was no additional emphasis on the entrance to Winterval up and through Gladstone Street and along George’s Street. In 2013 there was a greater importance stressed on bringing footfall through the City Centre by directing people up Gladstone Street and along George’s Street and thus in 2013 there were significantly more lights, a number of craft cabins, some food stalls, better signage and even a gigantic blow-up snowman or bear or something on The Quay showing you the way through Winterval.

This year there was very little in the way of Christmas decorations in these areas and many traders and businesses were feeling that they had been forgotten in 2014.

Some traders and businesses had even said to me that there was a clear inconsistency in terms of investment in this area of the City when compared to other areas of the City and this of course has led to many metaphors coming my way.

But the one that seemed to be coming to the fore was the idea of an unbalanced seesaw where one side of the seesaw had seen significant and continued monetary investment at the cost of the other side. Thus there will always be one area of the City looking better than the other and for a City the size of Waterford this is extremely noticeable and sticks out like a sore thumb.

Clearly, there has to be a rebalancing of the seesaw and this cannot be the sole responsibility of the traders and businesses that have chosen to invest, work and trade in this once bustling area of our City. Over the last few weeks we have seen and heard of numerous entrepreneurs investing in property in this part of the City to start that renaissance process. But this would be made much easier if it was felt that there was at the very least some parity in terms of future investment. If we are truly to drive the City forward then we need to encourage more investors into the City and this will be made much easier if the current set of entrepreneurs feel that the seesaw can be balanced.

The proposed Purple Flag for Waterford City will incorporate this area of the City Centre and in fact extend right the way down The Quay towards Rice Bridge. If we are to be successful in marketing the City as a future Purple Flag destination then we need to see an accelerated investment outside of the Viking Triangle area. There are a significant number of commercial rate payers across the City Centre that wish to see not only an increased investment but fairness in terms of balancing that investment. An investment that is ultimately partly paid for in the commercial rates contributions made on an annual basis by the businesses and traders across the whole City Centre.

Through the wonders of Google maps I have discovered that my playground still has the slide and three swings, but sadly the roundabout and my seesaw have been removed – no doubt removed by the mad health and safety world we live in today.

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