"the £100- £150M development". What?

Where has the other £150-£100 million gone?

Paul Rowen was quoted on 14th July 2009 saying "developers are vying to build a brand new £250million Rochdale Town Centre."

The press have always been given the figure of £250million.

Have the plans been scaled down or has the regeneration been over egged?

Carpet bomb, then nuke it!

I know here's a radical concept...perhaps we could have some decent SHOPS...that might be a good place to start , HUH?

And then scrap the 4% increase in Council Tax so the parents of the 64% of children living BELOW the official poverty line in Central Rochdale have enough money left from their benefits to spend in them...see it's not very difficult RMBC...just requires someone to get off their bottom & deal with it rather than hope the problem will go away like untreated dandruff....

And maybe a Council which had more than a snowballs chance in hell of getting the problem solved this side of the century !!

An exhibition about the development will be in the Wheatsheaf and Exchange shopping centres from today until Saturday, Monday 15 to Friday 19 March. 5 Days! It should be 5 weeks at least!

A couple of points spring out in this.

1 - the £100- £150M development - That's some wiggle room in terms of a budget!

2 - for 150m, because I doubt very much it will come in at 100m, you don't get much for your money. A 6th form college, a bus station, an office block and some shops!

3 - "The new retail and leisure development will be the final piece of the jigsaw"

I would have thought that should have been the first bit of the jigsaw. Rochdale is in a sorry state and by the time the final part is in place it may well be too late.

4 - Why does the 'flagship council office building' have to be in the middle of town. Surely there are cheaper and better locations for this! I'm not suggesting that the concil should not have a presence in the centre of town, but does it need a whole office block? Surely the non customer facing parts of it could be placed somewhere like the Kingsway business park - it's not like that place is bursting at the seams!

There have been many comments on this subject within this forum over the growing months regarding the town centre. Can these people,that the public offer advice and recommendations for improvement for free to not read the 'LOCAL PAPER' There has been so much positivity from local people and yet much more negativity from those that should be listening.
Regarding the comment from MarXPacE,if your pathetic suggestion was accepted it would be hoped that they would leave you chained up in the town centre with a flag to guide the missiles in !!

Con-sultation.

Our views are wanted?
But they have already built the models and designs to knock down St Andrews and other useful buildings. The Compulsary Purchase Orders have been passed and the demolition ball has swung.

The public are needed for nowt - apart from a quick chat so that all concerned can tick the box marked "public consultation".

I'm afraid to say that my town is a joke. An utter laughing stock as a direct result of inept, useless mismanagement from senior executive officers of Rochdale Council and their well paid buddies at Impact Partnership and the Rochdale Development Agency.

Rochdale does not need more new retail space - it doesn't take a genius to work that out or explain why there is no longer a "competition" of developers. The last standing were new kidz on the block -and it is public knowledge that they haven't had a project of this size before. No doubt the senior bods at RMBC and RDA are grateful they stuck it out - imagine if everyone had pulled out?

Are we getting value for money from all this "exciting regeneration"?

It seems that the only parts of the projects remaining are publicly funded.

We don't need new civic offices - the plans for the new PFI "Yelloway/Partnership Housemonstrosity is already too small with staff being forced to "hotdesk"?!

We didn't need the bus station moving- the old one is built like a russian tank - ugly but very sturdy - a simple refurb would have sufficed. In fact the new one is smaller, less convenient and further and even further away from the existing shops. doh!

New 6th form college - on the outskirts of town OVER the ring road. Genius.

New leisure centre- over a kilometre from the exsiting shops rather than something that could revitalise the town centre especially at evenings.

But never mind. These fools are spending "other peoples money" ie ours - and Rochdale Town Centre will be damned for another 30 years by this Mafia of the Mediocre.

Stop these stupid, vain, idiotic plans and concentrate on simple, common sense solutions to improve our town centre.

But then there wouldn't be fancy ribbon cutting ceremonies and opportunities for daft press releases in the Pennine Pravda then would there?

Wake up Rochdale! There is still time left.

I was naive enough to participate in the "public consultation" about the proposed "improvements" to the road junctions in Rochdale. As someone with a lifetime of experience in this area I thought my views may have been considered. Your thoughts, concerns and suggestions will be collected and then discarded. It is a cynical public relations exercise and the end result will probably be the same: A complete waste of our money.

This could be the end of Rochdale trying to emulate a Stalinist era urinal - a bad dream in the 1970s that has been a living nightmare ever since.

I will wear my lucky pants in anticipation of something positive to look at.

brilliantly put freddie t,what a load of rubbish asking the public.its already down in black and white and who cares what we think.start fighting back rochdale folk,lets make them listen.what a joke this town is.

I wrote this three years ago - it still seems appropriate

GHOST TOWN

Streets,
Litter strewn
And empty.

Shops,
Boarded up,
Long abandoned.

Businesses
Moved out.
Now peripheral satellites.

Houses
Out of town,
Shopping elsewhere.

Ghosts,
Wandering,
Where Rochdale used to be.

I agree with last, 'consultation needed', they have alreadt made up their minds as this Davidson character suggests, we are only invited to see. I have just completed yet another houisng survey, I get one every year. I live in the seven ugly sisters and look over on a town centre that gets all the money. I see the council call the their office's 'The Black Box' so they can sell us this idea that the building needs taking down. Well readers, when next in the town if you don't ruin your suspension on our disgraceful roads, just pan over, past the town hall and this nice college that is to attract hundreds of studentsm then behold the seven disgraceful ugly tenemant blocks the council call, The seven sisiter". They are full of asbestos, draconion slums of teh sixties and guess what are reciving a lick of paint with insulation that will merely allow any heat saved to drift off through the rubbish windows. Then peer at the top of these ugly sisters, the council's decision to locate not one but several transmitters on the top sums up what Davidson thinks of the people of this town, possibly, "FRY EM". You would not find a transmitter near any school or on top of her house. year on year all the money goes into a town that died to Bury years ago. Consitent failures of the likes of Davidson have seen to it. Her parking attendants drove people out years ago, her cronies covered up the river with concrete and prodicers flock to thuis dirty town to make documnetries of a sick people, the producers pan over to the seven sisters to show we are town living in teh past. As for giving teh flats a lick of paint, well can teh council not yet grasp "One cannot polish a turd". As for teh survey, well I complete it every year, must cost thousands of pounds but the seven sisters are here to stay and show up the town for what it is, draconin and slum like.

I am sorry if this offends the good people of Rochdale but as a person who has visited the town on many occasions this is the opinion I have formed over the years. This is also the view of many of the people I have worked with in my career.
Large community with the majority of ethnic groups not wanting to integrate with the UK culture.
Ineffective and unprofessional council that wastes money and cannot be trusted.
Many incidents of violent street assaults and rape.
Illegal immigrants being employed and exploited by greedy company and restaurant owners.
Rochdale gives the impression of a 3rd world culture in decline.