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AndrewC

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Everything posted by AndrewC

  1. The set up of the Council-run scheme at the top of Fargate descended in to farce and practically killed it off before it ever got going. Instead of opening with a full set of vendors in the height of summer, pulling in punters with sunshine and England Women's football matches, it ended up opening in a grey and dreary October with about two outlets. STACK have already delivered numerous successful schemes in the UK and - unless local politics and administration somehow manages to find a way to interfere - they'll likely deliver a successful scheme here, too. Good on them. That side of Arundel Gate needs some life in it.
  2. Not the primary point of this article or thread, but whenever the subject of Moorhead pops up I can't help but rant about losing it to the inner-city road building plans that ripped through the area. None of those post-war road building plans were great for central urban areas but in particular it really irks me that they chose to run the central 'civic circle' along Furnival Gate & Moorhead instead of potentially somewhere 1-2 blocks further south-west (for example, crossing the Moor in line with Matilda Street-Rockingham Street instead). In doing so they would have retained a quite prominent open space and junction in the area which today would probably be quite an attractive pedestrianised/semi-pedestrianised space on par with Fitzallan sq, Barkers Pool etc. All hindsight of course, and they had reasons for doing it the way they did, but just a sad loss.
  3. Travel to airports and out-of-town shopping centres in the UK is predominantly done by car, by quite some considerable margin in terms of modal share. Don't get me wrong, I wish it wasn't, but that is the reality. Not that we should sniff at it - it's fantastic that Newcastle Airport probably has a much higher % of people who travel to it doing so by train than a lot of the other provincial airports, but I'd still be tempted to lump a lot of money on most staff & passengers using car to get there. Meadowhall was built where it was because of the proximity to the M1. The train & tram links were a happy bonus provided by the local authority but I doubt the operators of Meadowhall would have gone out of their way to encourage a station etc. if they didn't exist. White Rose in Leeds and Trafford Centre in Manchester have no railway link. Metrolink has only recently been extended to TC in the last few years (2020). On Leeds-Bradford; you could just as easily argue that any struggle for customers they have is because the road links are pretty limited. It's almost exclusively single-carriageway all around the local area and it's miles from the M1, M62. I don't think it actually does put many off though, since the alternative is a much longer drive to Manchester e.g.
  4. I'm not sure a standard pub chain would do very well there - largely for the same reasons I've already explained, and I'm not sure I'd want too rowdy a crowd up on the terrace overlooking The Moor - but I could see slightly upmarket wine/cocktail bar etc selling that terrace space quite well to the discerning customer.
  5. Well...no, I don't think that graph is saying that - that's way I'm querying it. You can't determine from that graph how many cars the 600-700billion passenger kms are being done in. It could be in 1 car (tight squeeze) or 700 billion cars. We'd need to see what the average occupancy rate per car on the road had done over the same period. If it's gone down (and I believe these days it's around 1.2 persons per car) then that means more cars on the road, even if the overall distance travelled by all passengers is roughly the same. It's the exact same principle of 50 people in a bus taking up much less space than 50 people each in their own car. Anecdotal evidence isn't very reliable but for what it's worth, I think there has been a clear increase in the number of cars on our roads, up to 2020 when covid hit. In fact, I think I'm right in saying 2020 was the first year since the second world war when new registrations of cars in the UK did not increase. Cars are also bigger these days, causing even more issues in terms of road space, parking/storage etc., even if the number of miles travelled hasn't increased.
  6. Is that based on the mileage per car, or per passenger? The axis label would suggest the latter, which means it doesn't reflect the potential increase in cars. 2 people in one car travelling 10km is 20 passenger kms. 2 people in two cars (one each) travelling 10 km is 20 passenger kms as well, but double the number of cars on the road.
  7. Exactly, and that's the broader issue - within a couple of minutes walk you can get to places like Division Street, St Pauls, The Moor - and before too long the Cambridge Street Collective - all with food & drink places as good as or better as anything that's popped up in The Light. Not my personal cup of tea but at least Karen's Diner does provide that uniqueness that would draw people in. Good luck to them.
  8. Whatever someone does with the Debenhams building one day, it might be good to see a cafe/bar opening out on to the square again up there, though there's a danger it suffers the same issues as the ones in the Light.
  9. There is but it's still 'up there' out of sight, not really something that properly draws people in from the ground floor on The Moor. If it was a ground floor level, people would naturally meander down there from The Moor without even thinking or needing to know what was there - that's the subtle difference. There is, and it will help a bit, but without there being good reasons to go up there or without it being a natural thoroughfare it's always going to be struggling. This again will help but be marginal. We already have loads of people living in apartments between Charter Row & Division Street, the HSBC office employs countless workers but has barely caused an uptick in trade in The Light. It's going to take a lot, lot more residents & workers in that area to have a meaningful impact on through-traffic in The Light. Anyone on The Moor looking to go to all the new stuff around Leah's Yard, Cambridge Street etc is almost certainly going to cross at the top of The Moor and go directly up Cambridge Street.
  10. It actually isn't a 'great complex' at all, in the sense that it has a flaw in it's design that is virtually fatal - they put the main thoroughfare 'upstairs' from The Moor. Anyone on The Moor would be forgiven for not even realising that the restaurant units are up there. From the other end, The Light brings some people in but no where near enough to keep the restaurants in business. It's just generally not a well-used thoroughfare. It's caused a chronic lack of passing trade that makes it very, very tough for any run-of-the-mill offerings that attempt to survive up there. Maybe more niche offerings can use it - places where people go out of their way to find them (and maybe a place like Karen's Diner is that kind of establishment) - but it's just too quiet for places like Pizza Express etc. It might seem fickle, but then customers are. If you can see Five Guys 10 yards in front of you, why would you bother going up the escalator to another burger place that you can't see and didn't even know existed? I think they've done lots of great stuff along The Moor and it seems to be doing well, but they've made some silly errors. It's poor retail design/planning. Yes, that is happening and it is impacting the hospitality industry, but plenty of places in Sheffield are doing well - Orchard Square, Division Street, Kelham Island & Neepsend. Primary difference is the restaurants & bars are more visible, accessible, and where they aren't (think upstairs at Orchard Square) they are still pulling people in by offering something worth going out of your way for. Also, there is a buzz about those places I mention that simply doesn't exist with The Light.
  11. And I bet you half of those are just saying they're Christian as a default answer, out of habit from childhood, despite the fact they haven't practised their religion in any meaningful way in years. Did she die in vain? 😞
  12. Go ahead, but the number of people getting on or off the X1 at Magna when you happen to be looking is not a reliable indicator of whether the business case for a tram stop at Magna adds up. There are a variety of factors at play here, and 'how many people use the X1 past Magna' is only one of them.
  13. You're being conned. The political equivalent of someone tapping you on your right shoulder then stealing money out of your wallet over your left shoulder while you look the other way.
  14. It's actually quite embarrassing and awkward that people like you genuinely think that the relatively modest levels of immigration in to this country (compared to our peers) is the real cause of our finances being in a mess and public services being dreadful. The amount a city like Sheffield spends on newly arrived immigrants is a tiny fraction of the money spent on all other services for the vast majority of us who have lived here for a generation or more. Cuts to funding from central government and a lacklustre local and national economy are having a far, far greater impact on the money SCC have available to them.
  15. Nothing to do that with that as far as I'm aware. The site was going to be developed as per these plans, which were approved, but never materialised prior to the developer being wound up and the planning permission expiring. The Mirador | 24 floors | 73m | Approved | SkyscraperCity Forum Why Matthew Street remains closed, I couldn't say (I didn't realise it was, to be honest). I imagine it's simply because there is no pressing reason to bother reopening it and bringing it back up to scratch.
  16. Of course it isn't the only issue and no, you can't 'just' replace the paving and expect miracles, but - as you say yourself - this is not just 'replacing the paving'. As mentioned umpteen times on this thread a lot of this work is utility work underground, preparing the area for more residences above ground floors (until now almost everything on the upper floors of Fargate has been retail storage or office) and diversifying potential uses on Fargate is important for it to have a more stable economy going forward. There are also things like cycle lanes and green spaces which aren't easily retro-fitted in to the existing surfaces. And actually, investment in an area is a sign of confidence that retailers, businesses etc, ARE looking for. It's not the whole answer, of course, but when you look at The Moor, Orchard Square, what have they done but invested in new public realm improvements, new buildings, adapted uses - all the things that the Council are looking to do on Fargate now - and both of them are enjoying highly successful periods. They are dealing with the same decline in retail, the same leasing issues etc. that you refer to.
  17. Do you really consider every 30 years to be 'on a regular basis'?
  18. Yes, the Council keep 'bringing up' a global pandemic which killed hundreds locally, millions worldwide, changed the way we live a lot of our lives, and happened less than 5 years ago. What's that got to do with a youtube video on the Great Flood?
  19. There was a news story last year I think it was of a village in N Yorkshire which had a school that was going to close because there were so few new youngsters coming through. It was documented that the village had turned down numerous housing developments over the preceding 10-20 years and that the housing stock - and therefore most of the residents - had not changed in much in the same period, ergo, very few young families moving into the area...
  20. The irony here now of course being that the more you lower the density being offered, it becomes more difficult to build viable business cases for bus routes, cycle infrastructure, local shops, new schools/nurseries, etc. etc., meaning a higher percentage of the new residents all dependant on driving cars to existing facilities in nearby suburbs - making the traffic worse.
  21. As a taxpayer, I've helped bail out countless private companies over the last couple of decades from banks, to steelworks, to retail staff pensions etc, etc. I've also seen countless services and industries run in to the ground in the name of private profit. I'm not saying public ownership is perfect, or even on par with private, but it's a fallacy that private endeavours don't have plenty of inefficiencies in the way they're run, and they often end up costing the tax payer more in the long-run either way.
  22. I don't think that building was listed? Neither that block or it's sibling over the road (Midcity House - currently being demolished) have ever been listed to my knowledge? Which would mean that would have been a flat-out lie from the Council if given as the reason for refusal, but an easily refuted lie, if McDonalds appealed that at the time? Do you remember what year this was, planning apps should be easy enough to find (though it's trickier if it's older than 20 years)? I remember it was open as McDonalds when I came to Sheffield in 2003, but it was Stone The Crows for a few years before demolition, not sure when it changed...
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