Burnett House, try again

Four years ago I posted about this property, Burnett House on Castle Street. Back then I mentioned how the place had been renovated by the Council but was still standing empty. Well the place has been re-renovated (is that a word? well it is now) and instead of being just office space it now has permission to be either retail/restaurant or office plus there are now no fewer than seven apartments on the upper floors. I came across some estate agent bumf on this property describing it as being "located in a lively area, already boasting a well established evening entertainment scene", surely they can't mean the dead and dying old town, can they? Also the building has "superb road connections" that is to say it sits next to the A63 dual carriage way, the busiest road in town which is due to be overhauled in the next few years (possibly decades?). 

It is however nice to see the hideous tatty propaganda hoardings come down but the building still seems to be sitting empty though ....

Bold as brass

The latest on the new C4DI building is that it is now getting a cladding of shiny brass tiles. This is just the first of, I think, four new buildings for this site.

Death by a thousand bricks

In the late 80's or was it the early 90's Hull betook itself of a scheme to pedestrianise parts of the city centre. Whitefriargate's pedestrianisation in the 70's having been deemed a success it was thought that a goodly dose of the same medicine would improve the place. Accordingly Jameson Street, King Edward Street and Queen Victoria Square were closed to traffic and paved over. Then later bricked over, as you see. The idea, no doubt, was to improve the 'shopping experience' and indeed no-one now gets hastled by a bus on King Edward Street but then they never did if they stuck to the pavement. As for the shops they have for the most part gone; I doubt there's single business that was running from before still going now. Instead there's, well as I've said before numerous coffee shops, charity shops, shops selling telephones and discount stores. There's also the inescapable fact that the place looks (I'll be polite here) ugly and drab. I'm told that after about 6pm the whole place is deserted which accounts for the closure of so many restaurants, pubs and so on. Today's paper brings a  tale of a restaurant being opened with the forlorn hope to "revive the evening economy", well good luck with that.

Now  instead of drawing the logical conclusion that bricking the place up was a big mistake the Council is going to polish the turd, as they say in certain parts, and fling millions at 'improvements' for the City of Culture. It won't work, no amount of pavement fountains, arty farty works and so on will bring in the shoppers. (The shops by the way are all in the new shopping mall St Stephens or out of town (people are going to Leeds and Sheffield for their shopping!), we'll skip over the absence of joined up thinking here, shall we?)  

Well here's my view for it's worth: Admit that the planners were barmy (and quite possibly corrupt, Hull is far from alone in having failed pedestrian schemes all put in in the glorious 90's), rip out the bricks, put in some tarmac and bring back the buses and cars, restore the status quo ante; in short bring back the life that was sucked out by this idiotic scheme.  But I suspect it's too late, there's a definite stench of decay but that could just be the drains....

Hull Entrance

It'll soon be that time of year when the youthful hordes descend again on the Cottingham Road campus to take up again their ascetic life of study. The Uni likes to boast how many of its graduates are in employment (95%, if I recall right) but will not disclose just what that employment is; be it a burger flipper or CEO of Tesco. This Summer's political hoopla means that it has now provided this poor nation with two deputy leaders of the Labour Party (keep that quiet). The University may have many secret drinking clubs with  bizarre toad rituals; I wouldn't know about that; this is not Oxford after all.... Anyway to any freshers reading this nonsense a warm welcome and remember to move down the bus when standing ...

Chop it up for firewood

They say planting a tree is a gift to the future well I think the time has come for us to enjoy what this gift has to offer by way of heat and light. This tree on Nelson Street has clearly not been alive for quite a while but, as ever, there's been no hurry to remove it possibly because this is a conservation area where you can't blow your nose without prior permission from the Council. Perhaps they are deciding what suitable gift to make for posterity ...

Lake view

I've posted about East Park before so I've absolutely no excuse for doing it again ...

Weekend reflections are here

Zebedee's Yard

Having got permission to put a car park where a school building once stood Trinity House splashed out on a bit of metal work to proclaim that said car park is henceforth to be known as Zebedee's Yard. Access to this delight is via Posterngate. We've met with Zebedee before; Zebedee Scaping, long serving (55 years!) headmaster of Trinity House School lies under the sod in Western Cemetery.

The weekend in black and white continues here.