Gainsborough Square ‘finally coming together’

It may be the dream of any community activist to one day watch a youth in a run-down area lead an old lady across the street with her shopping. But this became a happy reality for Victoria Tiley, a volunteer in Lockleaze helping to oversee the final touches of a giant party to celebrate the long overdue £2.4 million redevelopment of Gainsborough Square.

Just last week she saw a boy she knew, who used to be “quite destructive”, take an old lady’s arm as she struggled out of the shops, and guide her over the square and all the way to her care home. “Four years ago it was a different ball game up here,” Victoria says, gesturing outside from the new community centre where the Love Lockleaze festival is being planned.

Recurring vandalism and a high crime rate has centred around this underused and neglected square of this underappreciated and neglected neighbourhood for too many years. Footfall was dwindling across the community’s centre and shops were slowly closing their doors around what was essentially a “muddy” and grey roundabout.

But Gainsborough Square is now a newly-returfed green(-ish) colour, with new trees and play facilities and (a distinctly lighter) grey around the edges where the council have remodeled the pavement and opened up the area to pedestrians.

It is part of a “regeneration strategy” in the area which starts with public realm improvement and ends, it is hoped, with the first private investment in the area for years.

But not everyone is convinced. “It’s a load of crap,” says Shirley Parsons, the manager at a charity shop looking over the square. “It’s only going to get vandalised again. We want shops up here, not community centres for a community that doesn’t exist.”

Her point, echoed by a colleague and a customer, is that since the area’s downward spiral people have been deserting it as a place to go, a place to use. Supermarkets elsewhere have drawn people to shop away where it is cheaper – or affordable at least.

“There are an awful lot of elderly here living below the bread line and they can’t afford to use the corner shops here. All we need is a supermarket of our own,” Shirley adds.

Another business owner, who asked not to be named, adds that since homes were ripped down near the square due to “concrete cancer”, footfall has dropped even more, turning the square into a deteriorating dead-end.

“On a Saturday it used to be buzzing here. I look out my window now and I’m the only shop open sometimes. And what do the council do? Plant some trees,” he adds before turning his back and returning to his shop.

Frustration is understandable when the council has delayed what should have been a relatively straight forward redevelopment by six months. But it is finally here and Love Lockleaze kicks off on Saturday – with the mayor cutting the ribbon  – to mark the start of a long game of greater regeneration.

One thing that was finished on time, though, was a new housing association development on a previously derelict building overlooking the square.

United Communities worked with the city council to build 28 new flats above two business units – one already employing 13 local people – and a new community centre, The Hub.

“It’s transformational,” enthuses Jayne Whittlestone, community manager of The Hub. “The feeling here is, it is all finally coming together. It’s taken a long time and residents are frustrated, but we are finally seeing results.”

The new community centre is already launching a programme of activities and events, coupled with youth sessions at the local adventure playground.

And the knock-on effect of redeveloping an eyesore is that surrounding abandoned buildings now look more likely to attract investment, with more housing on the cards and – if all goes to planned – one day a supermarket.

The new Romney Avenue bus link that will connect the area with students in Frenchay will, for the first time, mean the area will no longer be a dead-end either.

Gill Kirk, a Labour local councillor who is also helping prepare for Saturday’s festivities, says the key has been to get the public realm right first. “Get it right for the community and the people who use the square and more will come, eventually attracting the business which everyone wants so much. It is a long game, but this will kickstart regeneration,” she says.

By the end of this summer, she adds, the local neighbourhood partnership should start consulting on the next stage of Gainsborough Square’s future and the further redevelopment that’s in the pipeline.

In the six months or so since the first part of the project began, Victoria, also the operations manager at Studio 7, says attitudes have already changed.

“There are more people out on the street now, crime rates are down and vandalism hasn’t been a problem for a while,” she says, before recounting her tale about the destructive teenager helping a granny across the road.

Turning to the businesses on the other side of the square, she adds: “Some people just don’t like change. There, I’ve said it.”