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Not before time!
When I first worked in Croydon - on relief
for three months - I was based in an office in Katharine Street.
Three years later I was back, and worked in the same office in
Katharine Street. That was in 1974. In 1991 I was the last staff
member (in the company of a secretary who had preceded even myself
in Croydon's office of my subdivision of NatWest, but who had
worked elsewhere in between) - the last staff member to leave
the premises when we closed it down (yes, I did put the lights
out) - and I then did seven years in another office before that
was closed, too. All together I spent 24 years working in Croydon,
most of them in that one office.
It was at the crossroads, half-way down Katharine
Street, opposite the Town Hall and extremely handy for the Central
Library, Touring Information Bureau and so forth. Shops? Round
the corner. Pubs? Plenty of them in every direction. Buses? We
were on several bus routes including mine. Cycle parking? Yup.
Car parking? You jest, of course (I didn't use a car; but if
I had, there still wouldn't have been a space provided, a policy
of which I fully approved). So why this article?
Because, simply, between locking up in March
1991 and very recently, this double-fronted shop/office unit
in the heart of the town (can you get much more central than
the middle of Katharine Street - Fairfield Halls one way, Surrey
Street the other, West and East Croydon Stations plus a bus station
within walking distance??) - this unit was vacant for nearly
ten years. Unbelievable that the town could allow that to be
the case - yet undoubtedly it was. An empty unit smack in the
heart of a town which wanted to be a city. So - why?
Economics, that's why ... the landlord preferred
to keep the rent up but not to receive any simply because dropping
the rent to attract a tenant would lead to a clamour from other
tenants of the same landlord for similar treatment. It was seen,
not quite as a loss leader, but something very akin to that.
A pain which must be born if the rents on other properties are
to be kept up. But as for Croydon's civic pride and the letting
down of the appearance of the centre by virtue of an empty suite
of offices - well, that wasn't the landlord's problem, was it?
And therein lies the danger of prostituting
oneself to commercial interests - I am reminded of the story
of supping with the devil and the relevance of the "long
spoon". We dance, you see, to different tunes. There's no
use appealing to a businessman's better nature - he doesn't have
one. He is ruled by accountants and shareholders. His target
isn't city status, it's the bottom line. He will benefit the
town by providing employment - so long as he's not tempted elsewhere.
He may add some greenery by way of a mini-garden - so long as
it doesn't cost too much. I'm not criticising, that's the way
business works.
So if we are thinking of handing over the
initiative in driving the town forward - into the 21st century,
towards city status, in repelling the advances of Lakeside, Bluewater
and the like, or in whatever way we see the town progressing
- if we hand this over to business to take forward, we need to
be very aware that we may not like the results, much as we (I)
regretted seeing a central location being unused for the best
part of a decade.
The problem is identifying a broad-spectrum
overall plan that business will "buy into"; something
which the town controls, through the Borough Council, in liaison
with the civic society, residents' associations, Chamber of Commerce,
Conservation Area Advisory Panels and as many other bodies as
may be appropriate; something we design and business wants to
be part of. Not something they design and we tolerate the bad
bits of (lousy English, that sentence - do forgive me).
The problem is that we (the burgesses) are
not prepared to pay the cost of designing a complete township
through Council Tax; so we have to accept that, at some level,
we hand over control to others. This was, at one time, for instance,
at the level of "what colour/ materials will your facade
be?" - a question to which we would accept virtually any
reasonable answer. This thinking came down from central Government,
that planning authorities should not concern themselves with
detailed design of windows. This is a view with which I have
some sympathy, but it needs to be tempered with a note of caution
aimed at securing consistency of general appearance, as in the
wonderful diversity in uniformity of the western side of High
Street to the north of Surrey Street, where the Victorian reconstruction
of the area produced an harmonious whole made of individual buildings.
So - the matters comes down to a balance -
deciding at what level to pitch our control and at what level
the developer can set his own stamp on a building. At the large
scale, we're talking Unitary Development Plan - which is due
for revision soon, watch out for the Croydon Society's major
contribution to this - and at the smallest scale we can probably
cope with we're talking individual schemes for local sites by
way of sites strategy schemes (call them what you will). At the
end of the day, the developer will build, take his money, and
leave. The business will move in, try to stretch the planning
rules (car parking restrictions, for example) and, when the time
comes, will move on. The town council, and you, and me - we'll
be here when they've gone.
It's incumbent on us to say when enough is
enough. When we don't want prime locations to be empty for ten
years. When we decide that it's time to draw a line in the sand
and tell the world of commerce to stay that side, 'cos we control
this side. Join the Croydon Society's input to the UDP revision
by reading the documents when they're issued, by letting us have
your local perspective, or the broader picture, or both, by telling
the Council what you think they should be allowing. Copy your
submissions to us, we need to know what you're thinking, we need
to know what support there is to any particular point of view.
That way we can secure a town we can be proud of.
One that doesn't have office units vacant
beyond the end of the millennium.
Andy Bebington
Editors Note:
The Croydon Society is about the people
who live and work in Croydon and the way we can make our living
environment better, Andy describes what needs to be progressed
- what is your view? How can Croydon (in this example central
Croydon) be a better place to live and work in. Send your contribution
in and I will publish it in the next Focus.
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