A look inside the Prestwich precinct makeover in four episodes, based on an interview with Muse developer project lead…
Episode One…
So, it’s Thursday morning, and you’re a bit early to interview Hugh Taylor from Muse who, with Bury Council as a ‘Joint Venture’ partner, is leading the ‘£100+million New Vision for Prestwich’. You detour, and start taking some photos for posterity of The Retreat, a huge, swirling, granite, dry fountain sculpture in the old precinct ‘village square’. You get really close and start looking properly at the writing that’s etched into the stone…
…These are the wishes and aspirations of some of those hundreds of local people who contributed to the £350,000 artwork created by Isabella Lockett just over twenty years ago. There’s words, there’s phrases, there’s poetry: there’s the names of kids who took part…Susie and Sarah May Age 13…Josh Age 14, Craig, Age 14… There’s ‘peace’ script in Hebrew and Arabic. There’s so much hope…‘Turn your dreams into gold’… ‘I feel safe’…‘No prejudice, no abuse’… ‘We’re the soul of the community’… ‘A place with no fights; a place with equal rights’…‘My perfect place’…
The Retreat was the centrepiece for the one million pound ‘regeneration’ of Prestwich in 2003. The artwork, with its chequered past of glass and bubblebath, is soon to be dismantled.
Over at the far side of the fountain square are some Labour Party people with their big red placards huddled besides a lorry with a side screen photo of a smirking Nigel Farage and the reasons why he’s ‘Not On Your Side’…It seems like it was, or is going to be, some kind of election photoshoot. The backdrop is not The Retreat…
En route from the fountain to the interview at the round-the-corner former Village Greens shop unit, you pass the stone table with a mosaic of tiles with people, dates and maps associated with the area, by artist Brad Bradshaw. Friedrich Engels is on there somewhere, commemorating the tale that he rode his horse on Kersal Moor. You also notice, probably for the first time, that all the oblong rock-hard seats along the walkway also have writing carved into them…‘In my secret garden…you can taste…’; ‘In my secret garden…you can smell…’; ‘In my secret garden… you can hear…’.
You can certainly hear a pin drop as the old Seventies ‘vision come true’ precinct is deserted. Just the pigeons, and the boarded up, shuttered down old opticians, bank, Budget Savers, Percivals, charity shops et al awaiting demolition in the next few weeks.
Outside Village Greens, almost next to Bury New Road, is a kind of brutalist sundial, lost in the shadows with weeds growing around its base. The people sheltered at the bus stop have their backs to it. Cut into its paved granite rays is the poignant word ‘Retreat’ in all different languages…
…It’s grey almost blends into the background as the old vegan shop window is now bursting with multi-coloured floaty think bubbles and maps… ‘VISUALISING THE FUTURE’… ‘PLENTY OF GREEN SPACES’… ‘A NEW GYM’…‘A BIGGER VILLAGE SQUARE’…‘248 NEW HOMES’… ‘A CENTRAL MARKET HALL AND NEW RETAIL SPACES’… ‘COMMUNITY HUB WITH NEW LARGER LIBRARY’… ‘OVER 300 PARKING SPACES’… ‘Have your say…’
The dates for initially ‘having your say’ are now well gone. The latest planning application for the ‘visualisation for the future’ has been lodged with Bury Council but it’s not been ‘validated’ and thus isn’t on the Council’s website yet. This huge set of documents, when they appear, will have lots more detail about what is actually going up, and people will be able to object or otherwise before the Council inevitably passes it.
Without these documents all you have to go on really is the window display, social media and mainstream media posts and the Your Prestwich website. Inside the now deserted Village Greens are a few ‘visualising’ boards, no chairs and a few tables to sit on. Here, a very confident, affable and “proud” Hugh Taylor, Muse Senior Project Manager and lead on the Prestwich job, is with Raheim Clemetson, Apprentice Project Manager for Muse, set to answer questions…
Let’s begin with the ‘OVER 300 PARKING SPACES’, portrayed in the blurb as a new ‘travel hub’. Also scoffed at by many, seeing only a multi-storey car park. So, is it a travel hub or a car park?
“As a travel hub it is a multi-storey car park with functions within it for cycle storage and cycle maintenance space” Hugh tries to explain…
So it’s a car park?
“I understand some people may view that as a car park, which I totally accept and respect” he responds “From our perspective it’s slightly more than that in terms of active travel. It’s the ability to cycle into the centre of the village and lock your bike up somewhere that is secure; and where you can repair a puncture or a malfunction before you make your way home again; that is an opportunity more than your average car park.”
Is he aware of all the social media stuff surrounding this?
“Unfortunately so…”
It’s like a panto. Every time the regen’s Your Prestwich posts something about the ‘travel hub’ everyone virtually screams ‘It’s a car park!’
“I can see it from both sides” he shrugs “There’s a massive amount of central government funding in GMCA [Greater Manchester Combined Authority] that’s gone into it because it is a ‘travel hub’.”
It’s costing £14million to build; how is that going to be recouped?
“We’ve just been commissioned as part of the Joint Venture to deliver the travel hub, and early summer we will hand it to the Council and they will then bring an operator in.”
The problem is that, on the same site, you had a free car park with loads of space and now it’s gone. So you’re taking facilities off the community and then charging them for what was previously a free car park?
“I’ve seen so many people park in the free car park, jump on the tram and clearly spend their day working in Manchester and then come back to their car with no economic spend from those people” he says “There’s no added value to Prestwich other than free car parking for them.
“What we have advised is that the Council works quite hard to differentiate between those who are commuters and those who are actively spending in the village centre” he adds “I think there will be provisions within the car park…it could be first two hours free or offset parking against spend locally, all of these options are on the table that the Council are working through at the moment.
“Within the development, we also have 25 spaces” he adds, referencing a wider Council parking strategy “…and there is a very heavy focus on how we ensure that those spaces are for rapid turnover, for people who are nipping in to do bits. We are alert of what needs to be done to keep the footprint active.”
But will the ‘footprint’ be active?
In the next episode… From Travel Hub to Community Hub…
