£300,000 square looks nice – but is there a point to it?
WHAT do you think of Rawtenstall’s new £300,000 Town Square?
There’s no doubt that there is excitement at the council, and with some in the town centre, at the completion of the work.
For sure, it’s much more pleasant to look at than the old Valley Centre, which the council purchased several years ago with the intention of knocking it down and redeveloping the site.
The Valley Centre, once a focal point of the town centre, had become a largely empty, grim space which blighted the whole of the town centre.
But it’s also worth remembering the focal point bit.
People with long memories tend to speak fondly of the shops that were once there and there’s no doubting that when the Valley Centre was in its pomp it was a reason people came into the town centre.
And that remains the big unanswered question about the council’s multi-million pound investment in knocking down the Valley Centre, the funding of the new bus station and the overall Spinning Point project.
Now feels like a good time to look again at this, because the official unveiling of the new-look Town Square largely marks the conclusion of the Spinning Point project, which when launched was described as a way of revitalising the town centre.
No doubt powered by good intentions (as well as
a lot of public money), the Spinning Point project has none-the-less managed to divide opinion along the way, with the council regularly been accused of being a little deaf to the opinions of those who were anything less than 100% supportive of what was being proposed.
It was meant to create a place which would prompt people to visit Rawtenstall.
That’s why the council
went through a succession of proposals for the site, ranging from a ‘worldclass’ hotel to flats, shops to a spa.
Local representations for leisure facilities, such as an arts centre or cinema, were rebuffed by the council. Ultimately, none came to pass.
In what proved to be a stroke of good fortune on timing, the council concluded it wasn’t the right time to start
underwriting major construction work which would rely on the council generating rent from tenants...weeks before the pandemic hit and decimated the commercial property market.
But, two years on, we now have a nice-looking town square, albeit with a chronic shortage of places to sit in a square billed as a meeting place, and a bus station.
Will either draw people into the town centre?
At the moment, the answer is probably not – unless you’re one of those people who has to change buses at Rawtenstall Station as a result of the changes to the Rosso timetables from last year.
The challenge therefore, for the council, is to set out how an investment running into many millions of pounds, is going to pay off for the town centre.
What are they going to do with the new Town Square to make sure it brings people into the town centre?
For local Tories, being the opposition in the borough, now would be a good time to be asking for a full review of the Spinning Point project, seeking answers on how much it has cost, and how it will benefit the town going forward.