A hot topic in stoke for the past few years is its regeneration and now i am the chair of the overview and scrutiny committee for city renewal i thought readers of this site might find my views interesting on how i see past, present and future regeneration impacting on our community.
Having grown up outside of the city in a suburb of london called Harrow, my childhood actually witnessed this area turn itself into a place with a pretty good city centre. When my family first moved there there was no city centre shopping centre just a high street with poor roads and dirty old bus station. Soon after moving here the first shopping centre opened “St Anns” in 1987 by princess diana, i was actually present and gave her a bunch of flowers as part of a school trip! Shortly after the local roads were improved, public art installed (A bronze statue of a skipping girl called “Katie” that was stolen once or twice and no doubt scrapped!) a new bus station came soon enough and then the icing on the cake was a second shopping complex called “St Georges” that was focussed more around entertainment with a central cinema, food court and gym. Why am i telling you about the regeneration of somewhere 150 miles away with a totally different demographic? Because to me it is similar to the story of stoke and where our city centre is going but i have already seen this happen somewhere else and seen the benefits to that community.
We in Stoke have an advantage though, We have a very cool and modern ring road with even more improvements on its way. We have a spanking new fire station that looks amazing, We have the YMCA that is having a multi million pound facelift, We have the Mitchell memorial theatre with its ultra modern look and of course the new tescos that sits prominently along the ring road. We have a new bus station on its way, the east west (our version of Harrow’s St Georges centre) precinct on its way in the next 2 years and planning permission granted for the central business district.
The other side of the ring road we have modern housing estates coming together although at a slower rate of build that expected (credit crunch, recession and housing market demand impacted)…For me the East West precinct and Business district are the most important things we will do in the next couple of years as a city.
New Business District –> More jobs, higher working aspirations for local people, Influx of other workers into the city contributing to our local economy, More people in city centre post work recycling local money into local places such as restaurants, entertainment, theatres and bars.
East west Precinct –> Too many people work in stoke but spend their money in other cities. A major factor in sustaining ourselves as a city involves what i call “Recycling” of local money. For example you no longer go to the Trafford centre for an evening to shop, eat and go to the cinema because stoke has nothing for you but low aspirational shops in the potteries centre and a poor selection of restaurants. Instead you go to the ultra modern East west precinct where we will have a better quality of shopping, a modern cinema complex and better restaurants all in one place. That money you earnt locally gets ploughed back into local jobs and local people. Ok the bigger profits may go to a company based elsewhere but at least we are creating sustainable employment for the masses and jobs that even the most disadvantaged can do like cleaning, serving or customer service.
New residential developments –> Workers from the central business district will want city centre accomodation, canal side contempory living and realise that investing in city centre property should in line with other city’s always reap better rewards. Also local work again for local tradesmen, joiners and plumbers then of course window cleaners and gardeners long term.
So thats the physical side of things what about the people? We as a city have problems with worklessness which go hand in hand with family values, aspirational levels and outlooks on work. At any one time we have up to 20-25% on some sort of benefit and looking for work, yes some of these are hardcore non workers but alot are also eager looking for an opportunity to shine. We as a city have regenerated our working culture from a city of industry to a city of logistics and call centres something which i dont think has been easy but never the less i think has been pretty well done. We need to drive forward with this and encourage more employers to the city to take advantage of our potential enterprise zone and fantastic buildings such as the eco friendly logistics centre in Talke and modern business district. I know the council get critized for not bringing about enough inward investment but i think they actually do a good job and the officers that are left after the job losses are good people who are committed and work hard.
So thats my take on the key factors of local city regeneration, it focusses on our city centre as once we crack this the rest will follow and of course lets not forget all the other things that are going on including the potential local enterprise zone down at Shelton bar and the continued development at Trentham lakes.
Lets be take a look at what has been achieved in the next 4 years and then comment on how we as a council have performed.
I would be interested to hear about any comments you may have on this blog email me matt.wilcox@stoke.gov.uk or tweet me @mattwilcoxstoke
