 |
| A warm welcome to Cleethorpes - but, sadly, that's not what the station offers |
WHICH English seaside town railway station has the least memorable point of arrival?
Could Cleethorpes be a contender for the unwanted wooden spoon?
Passengers departing the forecourt are confronted with a giant box of an ugly building embellished with a gaudy sign.
Sadly the station's forecourt has not impressed urban designer Wayne Hemingway who has recently made several rail trips to Cleethorpes as part of his agency's commission to come up with ideas to inject new sparkle into the town.
As he made clear in a Zoom presentation, Mr Hemingway has been singularly underwhelmed.
He declared: "There's no sense that you are arriving somewhere special - you can't see the town centre, you can't see the sea and you can't see the pier."
So far Mr Hemingway has not come up with any costings - he is working on it - but he believes North East Lincolnshire Council, Network Rail and the private sector should combine to redevelop the station and surrounding areas as a "plaza".
His proposal is due to be discussed at various council meetings later this month in the hope that an action plan can be formulated.
One idea explored by the Hemingway team was to start from scratch, building a new station further up the line near the north end of North Promenade.
But this was not favoured by Lancastrian Mr Hemingway based on the similar project in his hometown, Morecambe, on the Lancashire Coast.
"It didn't really work,"he says. " I think a railway station needs to be as close to the town centre as possible."
It is not known if Network Rail have yet been party to any discussions, but they might be cautious, especially having been brownbeaten - by the Prime Minister, no less - into investing a shedload of money in a new railway footbridge at Suggitts Lane a few hundred yards down the track from the station.
So far not much has been forthcoming in the way of detail but Mr Hemingway favours some sort of 'plaza'
No comments:
Post a Comment