Police Station For Sale

Having put all their eggs in one basket by moving to Clough Road, Humberside Police now find themselves with surplus empty police stations. One in East Hull went for £300,000 just the other week and this one on Queen's Gardens is also up for grabs. The council had an idea of joining the sale of the station with redevelopment of the multi storey car park behind. A bigger site would attract a higher premium being their thought (for once it's not a bad idea). Now you'd think public services like the police and the council could at least get along well enough to come to some mutually beneficial arrangement. But, as the Police and Crime Commissioner for Humberside plod is of one political persuasion and the council is run by a different party, no agreement has been reached between the two idiotic parties over the future of this place. The PCC is also up for re-election next month so probably wants to get some Brownie points for independence though during his tenure the force has seen the highest burglary rates and been declared 'inadequate' by those who declare these things. He's not all heartless bureaucrat though, recognising that the place will attract vandals and so be unappealing during the year of culture he has promised to have the place demolished if it's not sold by then; leaving an empty brick filled demo site instead to greet visitors to Queen's Gardens. As I say, a thoughtful sort of guy.

Maybe things are never as bad as they seem

Here's a rather (too) large panorama of Trinity Square showing the work (ha!) in progress. Andrew Marvell has long gone, the church wall is history as is the large tree that stood on the right of the doorway and those uneven paving slabs of the church yards are probably in somebody's garden as I write. The good news is that the awful Trinity Square layout with its ridiculous seating and tedious brick paving are also gone. Also, in October last year, plans to build a lean-to restaurant up against the church exterior were shelved due to lack of funds; yet another of those things that were planned but are now (thankfully) not going to happen. 

Now as far as I can tell the plan is to install something like the image below which I've borrowed from the council's public realm document. I leave it to you to imagine how it will actually look. There seems to be only the vaguest of ideas as to what use this space will be put, cafés and seating and 'events' are mentioned but I don't see that being much different from the present use and that is spectacularly hopeless. If this were any other cathedral city, and let's admit that church is almost as big as a cathedral, it would be surrounded by a cathedral close with many tourist attractions, little stalls, entertainers; something to keep people interested. Here we get the same old "Seating will be installed and again pavement cafes will be encouraged " Pathetic! I doubt that after the initial interest has waned there will ever be that many people in Trinity Square, the odd stray duck perhaps, sitting in those silly little ponds.

Red and Blue

This is an old trader's warehouse on High Street that was converted for use as a restaurant some time back. Quite why it's not being used at this moment I don't know, perhaps the neighbours didn't like the colour scheme...

No iron bars, no cage, no worries

Have I mentioned how they'll nick anything in this one horse town? Even if it's cemented into the ground. Here's the old Mankind Under Threat feature of  Queen's Gardens under threat once again. Most of the iron bars, as you can see, have been stolen for want of a better word. The Council are now said to be preparing to move the whole thing to a site nearer the City Treasury where they can keep an eye on it (ha ha). That's if they can scrape up enough pennies from the back of their collective sofa. It's present site acts as a down-to-earth (literally) counterpoint to the outrageous, grandiose memorial to Wilberforce directly across the road; a stark reminder that the work started by Wilberforce et al is by no means complete. To move it would lose that poignancy and rob it of  meaning.

A story for another day

You'll be aware from a casual reading of this blog that the town is undergoing a make-over, a renovation , a transformation from ugly duckling to, well, we'd better wait and see. A large wodge of cash has been found to pay for all this. Included in the first stage plans was a facelift for Queen's Gardens which involved taking the place back to its 1950's redesign (down come those trees), a central performance stage (for what?), a removable stage over the above pond (again why two stages?) and more space to play 'sport' (just plain why?) and a memorial to some guitarist, Mick Ronson (who he?), from the 1970's whose appeal was and remains limited in the extreme. All of these bizarre ideas are, thankfully, now on hold, and officially won't start until 2018; that is to say after the year of the City of Culture (if ever). I don't know the reason for the delay but the suspicion that the Council bit off more than it could chew seems a reasonable one.

In the meanwhile, this place, which on a pleasant day should be an enjoyable peaceful haven in the centre of town, is suffering from neglect and decay by contractual cock-up. Being a park you'd think it would be looked after by the park services company, wouldn't you? Well the contract with that company mysteriously does not cover Queen's Gardens, so it is left to the overstretched street cleaners (or possibly the Council secretaries, dog wardens or whoever is free that day) to maintain this place and that is failing. The paths are cracked, litter is accumulating and anti-social elements, drunks and druggies, roam the place making it not as welcoming as it should be. The Council continues with its unrealistic, unnecessary pipe-dreams while the place is falling apart around it; nothing new there then.

More tales of woe from this lovely place tomorrow.

Weekend reflections are here.

Wilberforce Monument

I have shown this monument to William Wilberforce before but not, I think, from close up and personal. There were rumours of a move back to its original position on Monument Bridge but that is now considered unlikely. Lots of things that were proposed last year are now considered unlikely but that is a story for another day.

The weekend in black and white is here.

Two men in a boat

Here the little coble Harlequin is putting out into relatively calm North Sea to check lobster or crab pots or maybe just for a trip round the bay. If you click on this picture and peer a bit at the horizon you can just about make out some wind generators, these are part of what is going to be the world's largest offshore wind farm. This will keep the lights on in a million homes just so long as the wind blows.

The theme for City Daily Photo this month is the 'beauty of simplicity'.