To Margate yesterday for, er... well there's not much left really apart from £5 tracksuits, and even those will be hard to come by soon if the rumours that Primark's moving out are to be believed.Not that I was looking for a tracksuit of course. No, that would be too silly for words. But I took the opportunity whilst plonking the old Toyota Priapus in the Rendezvous car park of imagining how it will look in 2010, once the £25m (so far) Turnip Centre has been built. You know, there didn't seem an awful lot of space, bearing in mind that the lifeboat station will remain and there will also be a major commercial development on the site.
Safely back at the cliff top mansion on the super south side, I rummaged through some old papers and found a press release from Gleeson, the company that Kent County Council appointed last month as 'Preferred Development Partner' for the site, which witters on about 'a substantial scheme', including 'a four star hotel (in Margate?), some commercial development, and a new, substantial residential crescent.'
Personally, I can't see how they're going to fit it all in. Not unless the architects' models are, er, the actual buildings and they're planning some kind of renaissance of Ramsgate's defunct model village. Surely it can't be that they're going to build on the space created by de-dualling Fart Hill? That's been met with strong denials, and I for one believe every word of them. Meanwhile I see down the road in Dover they copped 4m regeneration mazoulians this week just for sending in an application on the back of a postcard.
I'll leave you with the words of one of our former local bloggers, who has recently become 'popular but beseiged™'. Speaking in 2004 he said:
Why the fiscally challenged planners at Kent County Council in conjunction with Thanet Council believe that opening a gallery in a famous artist's name, with none of his paintings on display, will suddenly transform Margate into a cultural Mecca and attract hordes (sic) of cultural day-trippers is anyone's guess... £20 million pounds for the Turner Centre means higher poll tax bills for the local population... and £2o million wasted, when it could have been put to much better use on other schemes...'
Nowadays he's a Tory councillor and fully supports it. Politicians, eh!
Click here for Gleeson press release on Rendezvous site
Click here for government press release on regeneration grant to Dover
23 comments:
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This is TDC & KCC we are talking about here!
Nice idea! Maybe we should get Dr Who on the case, rather than Dr Whatsit. A fictional TV character solving a non-existent art gallery cum residential development. Should make for cracking telly! I'll get my old chum Russell T straight on it.
He should have it sorted by 6:20pm tonight!
Richard frankly when I saw the plans I just couldn’t believe how small Turner K9 is going to be, I reckon there will be no more gallery space in it than there is in the M&S site. Within the huge budget one would have thought they could have built something very much larger possibly big enough to house major exhibitions that would help regenerate Margate, I also thought that the way it’s laid out with several small gallery rooms it’s going to be very expensive to staff if any of the exhibits are valuable. I think they have gone down the road of assuming because they have used a famous architect and he has produced a building that may be ugly enough to win an architectural prize, the building is of good functional design as an art gallery.
I think flogging off the potential car park and the washing away of the original pebble prototype can be seen as an indicator of the muddled thinking that has gone into this project.
I am uncertain that putting residential accommodation down there would be any more sensible than the Pleasurama development in Ramsgate, in as much as even if the environment agency allow it, it would probably be uninsurable, and dangerous for people to live in.
Dr Who: Now Daleks can climb stairs the skylighted concrete slabby top floor could be in trouble.
new sidekick: Am I bovvered tho
Sandy Beach, light aircraft towing messages, councillor biggles wiv the lively CV, Irish Iris, Chipperfields circus, victoria pomeranian, K9, no Turners, Tracey Effin, education outreach reacharound stick it up yer ar-e
I AINT BOVVERED
But I aint paying its running costs doctor telling you now.
REEEEEGEEENNNEEEEEEERRRRAAATE!
NOOOOO TURNEEEER RATES
Sidekick: Wot yer doing mate ? Making an exhibition of yerself innit tho. At the contemperaneous art facility
Doctor Who: Someone's got to do it
Sidekick: But what you aiming for tho. You looking a numpty innit.
Doctor Who: I am aiming for 130,000 visitors.
Sidekick: Wot you doing in Thanet then innit ? You won't get visitors here mate.
Doctor Who: What about if someone popular went into hospital ?
Sidekick: I concede that to be a more realistic strategy for attracting visitors. Do they have anyone popular here who could feign illness get into hospital and attract visitors.
Doctor Who: There is a hero of marketing aviation. He recently came up with a stiffened resolve after overflying the viagra factory.
Sidekick: Would he get 130,000 visitors.
Doctor Who: His bedside hit counter would claim that number.
Sidekick: Who are you then ?
Doctor Ladyman: I am Doctor Steve the local MP
Sidekick: Are you saying you a time lord then ?
Doc Ladyman: No, no.
Sidekick: Can you regenerate then only time lords can regenerate. William Hartnell, f-cking Rasputin geezer who is a right laugh in real life, him from the Herriot series, Patrick Troughton, Little David here.
Doc Ladyman: No we make no claim to being able to regenerate in Thanet
Sidekick: Well what a f-cking liberty. That khazi at Margate harbour. They said that is the centre of a regeneration project, that's what they said darlin.
No I won't give up the day job.
Sidekick: Who are you then ?
Cllr: I am Councillor Oirish Iris
Sidekick: Then you'll know our son he is a gay marn
Cllr: I was wondering if the Doctor and you could time travel forward ten years and then return and tip me the wink how the Turner Centre is performing ?
Sidekick: Would you rather make that two years Oirish Iris ?
Cllr: Why ?
Sidekick: Well I am tinkin of the great storm in three years time
Cllr: Oh f-ck off you're having a laugh
Sidekick: Uncanny. That is exactly what the Margate lifeboat skipper says in three years time during the great storm. After being asked to put to sea to save Victoria Pommeljoy's prize exhibits.
If it is built. Make it the country's first Blog Nite Spot.
Guest blog host tonite one night only .... ECR
But there is much more to your Margate adventure weekend. After your Friday evening arrival and eats. Whereas other areas have paintball ? In Margate you will ride quad bikes and make an assault on the seafront recreational arson area.
If you outwit the security guards (Drawn from the elite of Thorley Tavern and Dave Bean bouncer teams) your objective is to torch the target building in the Goddens Gap.
Maybe roused from your recreational arson experience your next challenge is the Margate Da Vinci Code.
The clues will be there. Read and contribute en masse through mein host at the Margate Turner Centre Blogging Club. Mid blog beware that a low flying aircraft will buzz the Turner Centre towing an albino monk.
Despatch members of your weekend team to note what it is the Albino monk is chanting.
Saturday morning after a hard night, and a good greasy spoon brekkie, your hunt for the Margate Holy Grail begins. To the quad bikes visitors. With your clues gathered the night before. By blog and by the chants of the albino slipstream monk.
Beware the detective with the large nose and Chevalier accent.
Clue One are you one tenth the man of Margate of Margate's great grand pappies. To the Museum (if you can find it).
Yes the great 19th century rowing feat of the Margate lifeboat crew. Mighty men. 24 hours rowing the lifeboat never abandoning their hunt for the stricken vessel.
So you must select from your weekend team a crew to row for just 2.4 hours ... thirsty work.
But the real ales at the Turner Blog Club are at hand.
2.4 hours of rowing and the energy stored from that effort in a spring is suddenly released. Launching a local attention seeking councillor from the roof of the Lifeboat station in a pre-calculated parabolic flight path ending in an attempt on the world councillor skimming record as he bounces along the wave tops, dodging your jet skis. Who amongst the visitors will pull him out first. And get the clue.
Can it be that the Turner Centre is Margate's Holy Grail ?
Well it would have been a miracle if it had worked as an art centre. Making it into a blog club was genius.
Real ales. Bearded Camra hearties and Newcastle Brown bikers in regular attendance. Charity challenges every weekend. Visitor adventure weekends. Arson competitions.
Margate f-cking rocks.
Cage fighting. Bring that hard wee Geordie on who runs the show.
The Turner Centre Margate mecca for mixed martial arts. Margate gets ready to rumble.
You want visitors ?
You need fight, fire, fun and f-ck.
Wines Beers and Spirits
Music
I offer my marketing strategy ... FREE.
What a f*cking liberty!
Lets hope that when we have an election the ENGLISH public vote I was born here I love my town so people who dont live or have anything to do with it please leave alone
Wow! Fantastic! Homophobia,rascism and stultifying ignorance all in one thread.
It's good to see bloggers justifying Margate's laughable reputation in the civilised world.
Sadly, these dinosaurs days are numbered as Time Marches and progress waits for no bigot. The introduction of the Culture and Enlightenment Virus will mean the extinction of this ancient species.
Er, right. Time to draw a line under all that I think.
Although it would be good to hear from anyone out there who is actually in favour of the TC.
Turner Centre, yes I am in favour. I have to be, I have live in the old town area. I have started new businesses and sadly had to close them too. All on the promise of the Turner Centre. I have to believe that Margate is worth the effort.
After-all if I do not like it here why the hell would I stay!!!! I hear people moaning about Thanet and Margate in particular and yet they stay. WHY?
If you are not signed up for change and putting some effort in then shut the hell up or move away.
I do not agree with all the TDC and KCC do! After we have to have someone to rebel against. However if I get just a little more work out of having the Turner Centre there then I am for it.
Very easy to offer satire, not so easy to get involved... don't worry it will all be ok!
In truth the TC is a curates egg
The expression "a curate's egg" originally meant something that is partly good and partly bad, but as a result is entirely spoilt.
Steve Kilbee
I agree with Kate Jackson and am in favour of the TC.
I'm in favour of it, if only because this seems to be the only thing that anyone is offering Margate now (I live just down the road in Westbrook). It's coming up for the 100th anniversary of The Winter Gardens in a couple of years time (it was built in 1911), so a lot of people are hoping that the whole harbour / Winter Gdns / Lido area will receive a large cash injection too...
I'm in favour of the Turner thingy. I hope Peter Checksfield gets to hang all his nude photos there.....hey, that might draw the crowds in!
Toyota Priapus? Bet that one went straight over the heads of most of your audience...
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