The problem with Bristol’s Park Street? Cabot Circus…

By The Editor
Mar 5, 2010

Park Street: Another reason for the state of Park Street today? Two words... Cabot Circus

Blog Watch…
By The Bristol Blogger

Bizarro blog post of the week award goes to Paul Smith, the under-funded and over enthusiastic Labour parliamentary candidate for Bristol West. And it’s fast becoming clear that what Smith might lack in the making sense department, he’s sure making up for in prolific numbers of posts.

Over the last packed week he’s been busily reinventing the socialist left for the 21st century; supporting protestors fighting to stop the expansion of the Gloucestershire County cricket ground; helped stop the notorious Avonmouth bio-fuel plant – which at least got the local Lib Dems in a frenzied rage because they invented green issues apparently; attacked homeopathy and slammed the whole capitalist banking system.

He even found time to do what he optimistically bills as “an interview” with the Evening Post’s Redland People neighbourhood website.

It’s enough to make you think there’s an election on isn’t it?

But the blog we’re interested in today is titled ‘Up the Hill Backwards‘, named after the Bowie song that’s supposed to be about his divorce from Angie. A suitably symbolic car crash theme then.

I’ve now read this post a few times and it seems to be saying three things:

• Paul has attended a meeting with Park Street traders;
• The local Lib Dem MP Stephen Williams and local councillor ‘Jolly’ Jon Rogers have not attended a meeting with Park Street traders;
• The traders are upset because a news announcement from Jolly Jon was made in the, er … local newspaper!

Although what stands out from this post is what’s not said. Namely, why the hell might Park Street traders be hacked off and want to speak to politicians?

Smith eventually has a punt at answering this question in the comment section of his blog when he tells us of “a presentation from a German architect” he heard some years ago about “the extent to which the local council fills the street with unnecessary clutter.”

So the problem with Park Street is street clutter is it? I wonder has Smith ever been to the markets of Bangkok or maybe the Portobello Road on Saturday afternoon? These places are just one big load of clutter and it doesn’t seem to impact on retail trade in the slightest.

Are we really, then, to believe that were Park Street redesigned on ruthlessly efficient German modernist lines and turned it into some sort of outdoor version of the Bluewater Shopping Centre – no doubt with CCTV on every corner, hoodie bans, drink bans and private security to kick the homeless back to Stokes Croft – all would be fine?

Utter nonsense. To find out what’s wrong with Park Street all you need to do is walk down it. It’s full of empty shops and a lack of punters.

Some of this is, no doubt, due to the recession- whose main architect was Smith’s boss, Gormless Gordon, who spent ten years at the Treasury sucking up to city toffs and financial services schmucks until the whole thing collapsed under the weight of its own greedy stupidity.

But another reason for the state of Park Street today? Two words: Cabot Circus.

Just remind me, whose idea was it to build a new shopping centre on the far Eastern border of Broadmead? About as far from Park Street as you could possibly get?

And who ignored all the advice, from George Ferguson among others, that any new shopping development should be built West from Broadmead directly linking to the centre and consequently Park Street?

The answer is that it was Smith’s Bristol Labour Party – who ran the city uninterrupted for 30 years until the middle of the last decade – that did exactly what the city property developers behind Cabot Circus wanted and willingly agreed to drag high-end retailers and shoppers miles away from one of our existing and best shopping streets to the end of the M32.

For Smith to pretend that the problems now arising on Park street are a result of “street clutter” and Lib Dems not going to meetings is patently absurd. His party’s crap decisions are responsible.

Not that the Lib Dems are any better. This week Lib Dem leader, Barbara Janke broadcast a “video blog” alongside so-called “retail leaders” Richard Belt of Cabot Circus, Colin Lang of the Mall Bristol (which we all call The Galleries) and our old Mate John Hirst, former shoe salesman turned retail expert, who positively effervesces drivel for local politicians to lap up.

And don’t worry because our self-selected “retail leaders” have declared they’ve spotted “green shoots” and say that thanks to Cabot Circus we’re all in a “much stronger position moving out of the recession”.

Unless you’ve got a shop on Park Street that is. In which case you’re shafted either in or out of recession.