Readers' views on regeneration

9:13am Wednesday 14th May 2008

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Turn the centre of the Bull Ring into a bandstand covered by tenting. Use the site of the Crown House for a multi-storey car park on the lines of Crown Gate in Worcester with covered access to M&S and round into Weavers Wharf. Perhaps use tenting along the shop fronts to create a market in the first lines of parking and creating a covered walk through to Debenhams and the rest of the access to Weavers Wharf from Vicar Street.

A second storey on the Bromsgrove Street car park with proper lifts to access Worcester Street.

Perhaps use the old Littlewoods building to provide the lift facilities as well as Merry Hill-standard toilets.

The street surfaces would need to be upgraded.

Plans are already afoot for the development of the Morgan Timber Yard. These need to be extended to include the Matalan site by turning it into a marina area overlooked by apartments in the derelict factory on Park Lane and including a footway across into Weavers Wharf.

The site may well have been hugely valuable to the economy of Kidderminster for many years but time has moved on.The silos are now nothing more than a reminder of the past - the facts that they are large and visible from a great distance are good enough reasons for removing them They are the all-time proverbial blot on the landscape and always will be. Kidderminster needs to look forwards not backwards and glorifying an incredibly ugly relic of a dead industry is certainly not the way to do it.

The town needs to identify itself with where it is going rather than where it has been. If there is money to spare, let it be spent on developing the site for a good and useful future rather than waste it on pointless and hair-brained notions.

A little more attention to harmony in architecture would not go amiss, instead of apparently random and clashing designs. The ability to recognise the worth or otherwise, of some of the older buildings in town would be of great benefit, and to then construct new buildings that blend in amiably.

To achieve this harmony, however, would take far more money than could reasonably be expected to be spent. So, clearing the eyesores from the town would be a start, and the insistence that new developments fit in' would go a long way to making Kidderminster a town to come to and enjoy.

The area of Weavers Wharf should be a standard by which all other developments should be measured. The blend of fine' old with well designed (for the most part) new, is excellent.

However, care and involvement by the community in general would go a long way to making Kidderminster a town to be proud of.

As a member of the Friends of Broadwaters I take pride in the difference that the improvements to Broadwaters Park makes to the north eastern approach to the town.

If more groups like ours were to get involved with the fabric of their areas then Kidderminster would become a much nicer place to live.