Reply To: Heneghan Peng win Carlisle Pier

Phil,

I would imagine that the ‘preferred bidder’ negotiation window will allow the ‘linkage’ issue to be fully resolved. I think DLR Co.Co. owe it to the town to approach this imaginatively. For the record the Heneghan Peng scheme had a pedestrian ‘plaza’ at Queens road level (ie spanning Harbour road below) but did not cross “the main seafront road” instead stopping at the seaward side of Queens road. Regardless of this, the movement of pedestrians from the main town centre out onto the new pier will still have to be trashed out….

With regard to SOS, I am all for balanced debate but I get frustrated with scaremongering catchphrases like “privatisation of the pier”. The reality is that this eyesore of a pier has never been “open space” or accessible by the public and now will be turned into an amenity the like of which very few communities in the world are lucky enough to have.

By all means lets have quality public amenity within the context of the winning design but the SOS idyll of zero development, 100% open pier/promenade with a candyfloss stall and a statue of Marx at the end of it, is risible in the extreme and cannot be the starting point for the ‘other side of the argument’.

regards.