Dear Editor,
How Crewe went from railway hub to an HS2 ghost town.
Crewe was due to be a major interchange on the Birmingham to Manchester leg of HS2.
That part of HS2 has now been cancelled by the Tories and the Labour led #CheshireEast are having to write off £8 MILLION of taxpayers money they foolishly and recklessly invested before HS2 to Crewe was certain.
On top of that the town centre is dying on its feet because of the regular exodus of major national retailers.
The town centre doesn’t even have a Post Office!
On top of that, the £48m town centre re-development is three years behind schedule and has not got a prayer of ever being completed. No new shops. No new entertainment facilities.
And the Crozzy Club, an iconic town centre social club, a live music and events venue, first opened in 1959, is likely to be bulldozed to make way for yet more housing in the town.
It is a catastrophe. It is all very sad. Crewe’s Labour councillors seem intent on destroying the town.
Crewe First has detailed plans to revive the town centre.
We hope we will have a chance to implement them before the town centre is completely destroyed.
Yours faithfully,
Cllr Brian Silvester
Leader CreweFirst
Came through the Town Centre at 11-30am today. Hardly any stalls in an area that was once thriving. Only a few in front of M&S empty unit. It is not easy to solve but it does look like CEC and Crewe TC are just sitting in their offices.
There’s is no point of having HS2
Until you bring the railway to public owner ship again.
At the moment with so many unions members on strike and delays it’s a waste of money.
It’s is out of date from the moment they started construction of it.
This government couldn’t run a pxxs up in a brewery.
In West minister though is different.
Publish your plan with FULL COSTINGS if you have a plan please Brian instead of saying this and that
#CreweFirst has a detailed plan to revive the town centre, which is more than the other parties have.
I can send it to you if you want.
Unfortunately for some, towns are turning inside out. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, the cobbler, the fishmonger and other village life businesses congregated near the centre of traditional, car-free villages. Cottages and residences were generally on the perimeter of small but essential business agglomerations.
Along came the car, displacing buses, blocking streets, being directed with ubiquitous and carefully planned yellow lines into carparks for which they paid a fee, sometimes high, sometimes low.
Along came ANPR cameras, bus lanes, box junctions, traffic wardens,, double red lines even, and hostility to motorists.
Along came perimetral retail business parks with free parking and the rest is history.
So I am not surprised that the Crozzy club is being replaced with residential accommodation instead of another big city name like Marks and Spencers in the town centre.
All medium size town centres are destined to become more residential as footfall fades away, and peripheral essential services and food retailers encircle the ghosts of former villages, with their centralised butchers, bakers and candlestick makers, clustered around a warm and well illuminated Christmas tree at Yuletide, with the Salvation army silver band playing carols, and tambourines rustling evocatively in the hands of bespectacled and fearfully devout ladies.
To some it is called progress, to others it is the crumbling decay of our cultural heritage of coal-fired hamlets, villages, stables, byres and blacksmiths’ forges, where we once stood watched in awe, as we sampled the pungent smell of cauterised horses hooves’, as they stood with great patience, being shod in a spot where there is now an empty carpark, and silence.
Once again lots of words from a long time former councillor, 40 years late to the redevelopment and is it 6 projects for it and who was there during this non redevelopment yes you guessed it, may be the first priority is to have your leaflets printed in Crewe