Brunswick Centre plans are key to Scarborough's regeneration: Carl Les
Lest we forget. As mentioned previously, all North Yorkshire Councillors are offered wreaths to lay on behalf of a grateful council at services or locations of their choosing. Every year since I was elected in 1997 to represent the area of Catterick Garrison, and since a boundary change over a decade or so ago, only the villages around the garrison, I have chosen to do this at what was likely the first war memorial in the area.
Looking more like an icon of the Catholic faith, it stands high on an embankment beside the old A1, the Great North Road, outside Catterick Village.
Fittingly it stands between the garrison and the old Catterick airfield, home originally to the Royal Flying Corps, for it represents both establishments. “Sacred to the memory of the Officers, Non-commissioned Officers, and Men of Catterick Camp and Aerodrome who fell in The Great War 1914 – 1918”.
Poppies abound at this time, from the simple paper lapel badge to the dramatic cascade of Remembrance Festival singer Charlotte Potter's dress standing on the library stairs in Ripon Cathedral. I’m proud of the displays in the village where I’ve settled, knitted poppies of all sizes around the churchyard, with a flow from the top of the war memorial to the ground, silhouettes of soldiers on the village green, and knitted poppies and a Tommy’s tin hat on the postbox.
The Combined Authority which the elected mayor of York & North Yorkshire David Skaith chairs, and of which North Yorkshire Council and City of York Council are the constituent parts, meets monthly. As I do with the Executive Committee of the Council where almost half the meetings are now held not in County Hall but around the county.
The meeting was in Scarborough last week because an item on the agenda was specifically about an important issue for Scarborough, namely the setting up of a Mayoral Development Zone (MDZ).
Most coastal economies are struggling as they seek to transition from traditional sectors and ways of working within those sectors to modern opportunities.
Scarborough is no exception and is important to the council and the Combined Authority. Most economies require the same criteria, skills, transport, communications, energy supply and costs, and above all investment. The MDZ will attract inward investment including both public sector and private sector funding, and we have drawn the red line that delineates the zone to be purposefully broad, but especially to also include the harbour.
The council has an ambition for regeneration that goes from ‘the station to the shore’, encompassing the retail centre of the town. As Mayor Skaith said at the MCA meeting, high streets aren’t dead, but they do need to change. At the centre of this main retail area lies a vast empty retail block from a previous era that is a blight on other offers.
Working with the well-known and successful private developer Scarborough Group International (SGI) the plan is to transform the former Brunswick Centre into a major leisure, retail and hospitality destination, creating a year-round destination for residents and visitors.
The new centre will feature a six-screen multiplex cinema, and family leisure facilities, two new retail outlets and three food and drink outlets, some of which will be available to local businesses.
SGI will provide the core investment and construction of the site, which they already own, whilst public monies will come from the MCA and the government`s Pride in Place programme, together with an £8 million loan from North Yorkshire Council.
The proposed redevelopment is expected to deliver significant benefits to the economy of Scarborough, including 400 direct jobs.
Having now agreed the first £1 million to be matched by the MCA and the Pride in Place board, detailed design work and comprehensive due diligence can commence before any further monies are released, but this could be a major boost to the centre of what once was one of the country’s best seaside towns.
Once again it is hard not to mention American politics this week, in particular the election results. No matter how much money has been spent in the most expensive midterm elections ever, no matter how vitriolic and insulting the campaign, often being led from the very top, no matter how divisive the issues have been portrayed, it appears the American people by a substantial margin have turned their backs on Trumpism and in particular the effects of his ill-thought-out war in the Middle East, and the crude economics of tariffs. Perhaps the best quotation after the result was the Democrat who said “the bad guys didn`t win”.
What President Trump will do in the final two years, other than eulogise on the height of the ceilings in his new White House ballroom, and how well the infinity pool fronting the Lincoln Memorial will look, is frightening, especially in the window until the newly elected Congress and Senate take their seats, and can exercise a measure of moderation on the excesses of the Executive.
America deserves better. Europe, especially Ukraine, deserves a better ally.
Carl Les in the Conservative leader of North Yorkshire Council