Strategy to reinforce County Town status
Plans to revitalise Maidstone town centre and “reinforce its role as the County Town” are under way. Maidstone Borough Council is drawing up a strategy to help stop the rot suffered by high streets around the country, which it hopes will prove a commercial success. Key to its offering will be the provision of quality office space to pull in more workers and the delivery a “high quality, diverse housing” options in the town centre.
It is hoped by pulling in more people with disposable income, staging more events and creating a clear path through the town’s different areas, it will increase footfall.
And if it achieves that, it hopes more independent traders will start opening up in the town.
Explains Phil Coyne, the authority’s interim Local Plan director: “We need to prepare the town centre to change.
“I look at it as three-legged stool. “The first leg is bringing in some high added-value jobs, the second is making a certain amount of people live in town centres and the third bit is a retail, leisure, arts, culture and entertainment offer that will influence people’s decision as to whether they want to live and work and spend their leisure time in it.” But he admits there is unlikely to be any significant change immediately and describes it more as evolution than revolution.
Mr Coyne adds: “I think any of these things, done properly, take a long time to do.
“We could do a strategy tomorrow, but the important thing is that acceptance that as the world changes we have to change with it. “But there are things we can do quickly.
“It’s a long term strategy but we need to start working in the here and now.”