Time to map out a plan for Villa's future
- Says blogger Matthew Turvey
Interchange hits the buffers
Thursday 26th November 2009, 3:00PM GMT.
The transformation of Wolverhampton’s train station was today on the verge of collapse after council bosses admitted they had no money to fund it.
The £176 million Interchange project would have transformed the station and the area around it, creating new hotels and hundreds of homes.
The first phase of the project, costing £22 million, will start in January to rebuild the city’s bus station in Piper’s Row.
But today Wolverhampton Council admitted it had no funding in place to start the second phase of the project. It admitted that unless it receives an injection of public sector funding it will not go ahead in the foreseeable future.
In a report to Wolverhampton City Council’s sustainable communities scrutiny panel, head of transportation David Orton said: “Because of the economic downturn it is unlikely that phase two can be brought forward in the short to medium term unless further public sector funding support can be sourced.”
The project had been due for completion in 2013. But today’s funding crisis announcement means a new 1,200-space car park at the rail station, two hotels, 413,000 sq ft of office space, 215 homes and canalside “pods” for bars, restaurants or shops are now in doubt.
Work has already begun on preparing to close the bus station in the new year while it is rebuilt with 19 stands. It is due to open in 2011.
Regeneration chief Councillor Paddy Bradley today said: “What we need to do now is bring forward phase two and work out what we do and don’t want.”
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Just proves how incompetent this council is. we need a safer and nicer train/bus station not some crappy fountain, perhaps if they gave up some of their pay and bonuses and stopped paying out for things that aren’t important, they’d find the money. Jobsworths.
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Here we go again CITY what a joke
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Absolutely brilliant(not).Have’nt raised enough money in parking fines or fineing motorists?
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At the age of 29, I have seen the “city” go into delcine, become a laughing stock, its a depressing place to live, sadly for me I work in the area, if it were not for that I would have left years ago.
Well done Council, Wolves you had better win on Sunday!
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Number 1, Andy:
I think you will find that the fountain was started by the previous lot, you know, the Labour jokers! However I must say that it was the only decent thing that they brought to Wolverhapton in 20 years of control. Probably because they spent most of their time driving away commerce, business and employment!
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This city is going downhill fast and if there isn’t some massive redevelopments soon there will be no city centre left. We are supposed to be a city and yet we are streets behind other areas such as Walsall such as Telford. Why would anyone want to come here shopping or for a nightout? It is a disgrace and as a city we are becoming a joke.
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What a mess this Tory led council is – first Summer Row went bump now the Interchange is going down – you wouldn’t put them in charge of changing lightbulbs!!!
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Well. I never!
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I totally agree. It’s a complete joke. The council just look like fools. Haven’t they heard of contingency planning?
Wolverhampton desperately needs projects like this. It’s already bad enough thet the private sector doesn’t see enough future in the city to get Summer Row off the ground but now even the public sector in the form of the council can’t even get things right. The worst that could happen here is that development goes ahead piecemeal, rather than as one grand project, and personally, I’d scrap the bus station upgrade until complete funding is available, otherwise thes rest of the development will never happen.
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I don’t live in the midlands any more but travel up for the wolves games.
It is so upsetting to see how Wolverhampton has gone downhill. Pubs boarded up everywhere and a general depressing feel to the whole city
The journey from the train station to molineux, whichever route you walk is full of eyesores.
It has to be time to get private sector finance in- wouldn’t it be great to see oneills opened again, flares, rothwells and the numerous other pubs.
The councillors cannot afford not to invest in this scheme- they are sounding the death knell for wolverhampton if they don’t proceed quickly.
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IN additionl,with pubs going bump at an increasing rate, whose bright idea is it to acquiese to the police and move so many games to midday on saturday or sunday?
Those of us who travel a distance are being inconvenienced and pubs are being deprived of much needed revenue.
As the Specials sang in the civic a few weeks ago… ‘ This town..coming like a ghost town’ never have those words been more apt.
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The comments here just hammer home the problem with the electorate. The current council don’t have any money for projects like this, simply because the former Labour run council wasted so much money when they were in power. Such as the fountain in Queen’s Square.
But I suppose when you consider the IQ of the average Wulfrunian is that of a baked potato, it’s no wonder they only see in black and white.
The attitude of ‘the current council must be to blame because they’re in charge now’, is laughable and downright ignorant.
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Simple case of Economics I’m afraid. Wolverhampton is a difficult place to invest.
Low skills, low expectations, poor attitude to change – and that’s just the old council.
Thank god there’s been a change, the city is at rock bottem at the moment, the only way is up.
“Out of darkness” is very apt, it can’t get much darker!
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Apart from the front reception, the train station doesn’t look so bad – but what’s all this about new hotels, leisure facilities, blah-blah that is already dormant in the Low-Level?
By the way, I love the new fountain. It’s a piddle rather than a whoosh but the light changes and different currents make it watchable. I’d like to see the “Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing” moving sculpture back over the Art Gallery which made people stop and look (while erstwhile Goose customers tapped you for bus-fare).
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I left Wolverhampton 25 years ago via Manchester and London, it breaks my heart to see the lost opportunities to make it a great City, total incompetence on behalf of a council bereft of ideas.
firstly they allowed the Merry Hill center to destroy the Town centre instead of taking the lead and building a center in Wolverhampton, now they have no money…what a joke council in the meantime most towns and cities across the UK have build fabulous Shopping/Eating facilities in the center of their Towns…still there is always the fountain when it works and before it gets vandalised.
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I think ‘Pete Smith’ can only be a Labour councillor. Truth is, 12 years of Labour’s profligate spending on both a national and local scale on social engineering projects with their consultants, special advisors, diversity officers and massive, wasteful public sector has meant money has been starved from the REAL economy.
Wolverhampton is the epitome of what destructive Labour mismanagement can bring to a town.
The place is a post-industrial wreck of a town. Neglected for tens of years.
The Interchange and Summer Row unfunded and unlikely to happen projects are yet more examples of that.
I’ve mentioned the same on these pages several times.
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I agree that the city is losing ground to other areas. The city needs to invest in facilities like the bus and train station upgrade in order to give a better impression. For too long major parts of the city have been allowed to become derelict. We are still waiting for Raglan Street development, Royal hospital site let alone Summer Row. Anyone driving into the city along the Willenhall Road must wonder where they have ended up with empty buildings with broken windows and fly tipping on a large empty site. Too many council departments are full of “Kingdom Builders” who spend money on worthless projects, rather than on projects the city needs.
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again like dudley town in many ways all the great artists pictures and publicity really add up to a waste of money
its put there to make people feel good about there area but in reality it will never really happen
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Not the best advert for the Tory-led council, but Labour must not gain Wolves SW or they’ll have a Commons majority. People can safely vote Tory to stop them without Cameron securing his own majority, whereas further down the Tory target list in Dudley North voting Tory is too risky. A win there probably means a Tory Commons majority, so in Dudley North Labour must be supported to stop them.
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The readers of these comment need to be made aware that Labour have drained this wonderful City of all it’s life blood.
The Tories didn’t take control until the recession had already bitten.
How on earth could any of you expect they Tories to be able to find the hundreds of millions of pounds required to progress with the projects that the deluded Labour council dreamed up, in the middle of a recession that was caused by a deluded Labour government.
Just remember that our current Prime Minister previously was the Chancellor of the Exchequer for 10 years and he never saw it coming, not even when he sold off all the country’s gold reserves for peanuts.
In Wolverhampton the Conservative council are trying to save taxpayers money in areas that don’t warrent such wasteful spending in an effort to try and get the council tax down to a level that you and I can afford. Remember that every year since 1992, the previous Labour council stole from your purses and wallets by putting council tax up by 5% each and every year! That is daylight robbery!
Also what people need to realise is that these massive projects require massive funding from outside (private) developers because the Labour government won’t give the council the money, infact the govenment has cut the funding to the council! None of the private developer are currently investiong full stop, that is because of GORDON BROWNS RECESSION!
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I think the people of Wolverhampton would like to know whether the council have read these comments,what they think and what the actual plans are to turn this City from the delapidated building site it is back into a place we can be proud of, not the pipe dreams that they try and win us over with. Speak up Councillors
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An eclectic mix of previous comment, some blatently political hogwash, some of genuine concern, some of genuine foresight; however the facts are the council officers of the planning,regeneration and highways are the real culprits here, egged on by councillors of all persuasions,coucillors who have very little understanding of local and national mechanisms of gaining funding and implementing their requirements on the said officers.Both groups have no understanding of the needs and wiles of the private sector investors: It’s also true that 20 years of a Labour council and 12 years of a Labour/Brussels government has been catastrophic effect on Wolverhampton, with all investment going to Birmingham (have you seen 10-30 the old buses they have given us of late ), having said that,the current council is full of bull as well, as I have stated in this press vehicle previous, the station was never going to happen ditto summer row,springfield,royal,tesco/sainsbury;the clowns in planning have been had over and over again by asset grabbing developers. Express and Star, stop trumpeting all these fantasy schemes pumped out by the council at the ‘kremlin’ and giving them the oxygen to survive; you should print all critisisms of this shoddy lot, prominently in your paper, not bury them on the the net or disregard them at all, hen perhaps if you support the people, the people will support you and halt the circulation dive. See my previous plan for regeneration of the city and it’s environs, that at least required some thought.
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Labour have ruined our once great city!
The Tories are fighting to rebuild and redevelope the shatters remain that have been bequithed to them by the previous uncaring Labour council and the uncaring and unnaccountable Labour government.
Labour politicians should be ashamed of themselves!
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Wolverhampton is a despicable place!
I left it many years ago as it was turning into a gun city, a city of little or no interest to anyone who comes from another town/city, rubbish deposited all over the place and buildings either run down or demolished with nothing put up to replace them.
It does not matter which councils are in power, the same problems always surface, no money, cannot get the Government to make a decision, no company wishes to invest and so it goes on and on.
It comes as no surprise therefore that the Interchange Project has been shelved, maybe for a long, long time because Wolverhampton at times thinks big but only has pocket money to carry the ideas out AND Wolverhampton ranks very low in the priorities of companies or organisations wanting to invest their capital!
Birmingham had the same problems and quite possibly on a much greater scale and look what they have achieved!
Wolverhampton? – stick it in one of the thousands upon thopusands of refuse bins lying around the place – and good riddance!
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Given there is no money to invest in any serious development perhaps they should spend a little bit on undoing the damage of a control freakery regime…
For example:
1. Re-establish the traditional road network in and to the City Centre. Re-stablish the through routes of Great Brickiln Street, Salop Street, Cleveland Road, North Street. Do this even if the only short term means is road junctions on the ring road.
2. Re-introduce and expand car parking facilities in the City Centre. Provide up to 4 hours free parking.
3. Reopen the Darlington & Victoria Street-Queen Square-Lichfield Street route.
4. Sort out the ludicrous anti people traffic arrangements at Victoria Square and enable through traffic from Wednesfield Road to Lichfield Street (re-create Railway Street)… by hiving off half of the ring road width.
In an area which has been deprived of its first class public transport network (by a redundant pseudo-regional quango) it is ludicrouse to expect the City to thrive on the people able to access it using a collection of vehicles fit for the scrap yard.
Car travel seems to be the only feasible means of accessing anything in Wton.
Then the local authority can reimpose its planning requirement that City Centre development should be confined to the City Centre. It must stop trying to appease people in outlying areas by putting facilties “in the sticks” where they inevitably prove to be uneconomic and fail.
The problems of Wolverhampton are deep but curable. All it takes is the will. Loadsamoney is not the answer. Deal with these issues and Lo and Behold…. Investors will flood in.
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Sorry PJW but we people living ‘in the sticks’ pay our council taxes the same as everyone else, so why should all the cash go to the city centre?
Don’t we also have have a right to expect that our streets etc should be ‘modern-day’ and not have to live in slums?
The city maybe the centre but without it’s paying residents there would be no money at all for re-paving the streets bi-yearly or installing a nice fountain or indeed anything else that beautifies the city – if only!
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Sticks Resident
The answer is quite simple. If a facility is needed by everyone in the borough it belongs in the centre to minimise the need to travel for everyone. It is open to all people in the borough then.
Wolverhampton has a tradition of spending absolutely nothing on its city centre while lavishing money on uneconomic schemes in areas that cannot support or sustain them. A bit of this here. A bit of that there and the result is the destruction of a centre which used to be on an equal footing with Birmingham.
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