Vision needs our support

Fantastic designs, laudable ambitions and hope aplenty.

The vision for the Stadium Village will capture the imagination of many, but there’s a nagging feeling that we’ve been here before.

Four letters loom large when the artists’ impressions land on the doormat... Vaux.

You could open a gallery of the artists’ impressions of projects that have failed to materialise in Sunderland.

And most of those visions have connections with the Vaux site.

That said, the city’s visionaries are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

While there are those who will pour scorn on this vision of the future, there’s plenty more would complain if there was no vision at all.

What message would it send out if every request for information on the future of the city was greeted with a shrug of the shoulders and a shake of the head?

Fail to plan and you plan to fail. And it’s important to remember that there have been successes.

While we didn’t get the iconic bridge of our dreams, we have got a new bridge nearing completion across the Wear.

The artists’ impressions of the Keel Line and fountains at St Mary’s were also realised.

There’s a sincere hope that lessons have been learned from the Vaux setbacks, and that this new vision for the Stadium Village is based on mix of experience and expectation.

This is a 20-year plan which is admirable for its sheer scale, not only in sporting, home and business development, but in ambition.

It needs to be backed, not barracked, if it is to succeed.