Rothesay delighted with Place Making event
published this on 8:45 pm, Monday, 8th February, 2010Bute| Community News| Local Government| Regeneration | Comments (rss) | Respond | Ping |
At a time when Rothesay has just been revealed as a bolt-hole for the famous author, JD Salinger (who has just died), hiding from the publicity following the publication of his novel, Catcher in the Rye, Rothesay has been paying attention to reinventing itself.
A workshop event – designed to see what residents thought the priorities should be in an already-funded series of projects to refresh Rothesay’s historic town centre – has been judged a success.
The Place Making session, held in the Art Deco Rothesay Pavilion and acilitated by Greenspace Scotland, attracted some 50 people keen to share their ideas.
A wide range of groups were represented, from residents and business owners to representatives from statutory bodies and community groups.
Everyone had their idea of how to enhance the Rothesay experience.
- People wondered how user-friendly the town is for pedestrians and vehicles.
- They questioned how the pier links with the town (and we won’t mention the quite inexplicable, monolithic lump of a Co-op store squatting between the two).
- They discussed how spaces in the area could be used better.
- They turned their minds to how the town could be visually enhanced.
Then participants were split into three groups, with each group given an hour in to explore and assess a particular area.
They were asked to consider the positive and negative aspects of the streets and spaces and encouraged to think about how to make improvements of various kinds.
Councillor Len Scoullar, Chair of the Rothesay CHORD Project Board, says: ‘There were numerous suggestions which will now be developed into short and long-term action plans by Greenspace Scotland.
‘Among them were simple things like cheering up the gap sites with wild flowers – but also larger projects such as building an iron bandstand in the middle of Guildford Square and increasing the amount of public art within Rothesay.
‘All groups said that they could see the potential in the historic buildings if they were restored to their former glory and all groups brought up the possibility of relocating car parking away from the Guildford Square area to make this more pedestrian and event friendly.
‘It was an extremely useful exercise and I would like to thank all those people who took part. Their contribution is much appreciated.’
The follow up is that, sfter coming up with an action plan, Greenspace Scotland will invite key people back to see whether some of the ideas can be put into practice.
As well as this, all comments will be fed into a master planning exercise which will be undertaken in March as part of the development of Rothesay Townscape Heritage Initiative.
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