Shushing back to the Millionaires' Playground in the old Priapus yesterday evening, I almost drove straight on into the harbour as I passed West Cliff Hall (motor museum in old money).Despite a well organised, well developed and well backed citizen-led plan to return the crumbling pile into a useful space for the people of Ramsgate, the rotters at TDC have gone and bunged it up for auction. And as residential too! What's that all about? A quick tour of the Harman Healy website revealed, er, west cliff 'all.
My spies tell me that the sign's appeared without notice, and despite a promise to consider carefully the proposal to turn it into a community arts space and cafe. A sort of Van Gogh Contemporary but at a fraction of the cost, if you like. Ah, er, now that may explain it. The Cecil Square duffers wouldn't want anything on the south side upstaging their precious, £24m Turnip, would they?
Meanwhile I see the whole of the Gazunder's second page is devoted this week to the World According to Chief Duffer Councillor Baywatch, in which he says he intends to conduct a review of all properties and sites for sale under the council's asset disposal programme. But presumably not this one. 'The lengths that people are prepared to go to to protect these sites may mean that we have misjudged public opinion,' says the Bearded One in a triumph of understatement.
Update: The Mayor of Ramsgate has now said in the comments to this post 'Auction has been suspended pending detail disscussion with interested group.' Phew!
5 comments:
Perhaps at last the elected members will listen to what the people of thanet who elected them want, rather than the c*** thought up in numerous away day expense account lunches etc that the vision expert directors who don't live in thanet dream up.
If they suggested that the director of finance turned up for work once in a while rather than spending the majority of time "working from home" our financial position might get better....or perhaps not
Creeps.
Richard I really don’t understand what TDC are up to with this one, I gather that they didn’t even inform Ramsgate Town Council in advance which seems very strange as both TDC and RTC were and have been for some time, negotiating the community arts space.
I think TDC have completely misinterpreted the asset disposal thing and instead of using it to get rid of unwanted council property they seem to be intent on destroying every community asset and tourist attraction.
I think they have completely lost site of the fact that these sites came into their hands in the first place to protect them for future generations from the first greedy developer who happened to come along.
Like Pleasurama this is a site that just isn’t suited for exploiting as a residential development, with Pleasurama they already seem to have binned £1m of our money on failed cliff repairs and even now twelve years is it, of the main council owned leisure site in the town derelict, they still seem to be unable to grasp the fact that it isn’t a good idea to build residential accommodation four metres away from an unsupported chalk cliff on a high risk flood zone.
How long do you think Westcliff Hall will be derelict for, while they work out that a tunnel under a public pavement isn’t suitable for residential accommodation?
Indeed Michael and another buried public loo.
Yet another waste of space developer will get their greedy and tax evading hands on this area.
Makes you wonder who is the benefit scrounger - TDC, or developers that seem to be wrecking Ramsgate with rabbit hutches.
Anyone have a problem with my statement see me in the office 07:00 onwards!!!
Auction has been suspended pending detail disscussion with interested group.
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