Paignton car park comes down as hopes rise of new future for town

The demolition of a multi-storey car park in Paignton will mark the beginning of a long-awaited drive to regenerate the town centre.
Work starts this week on pulling down the old concrete car park in Garfield Road, while its next door neighbour the Victoria car park will stay open as usual.
With Crossways already reduced to rubble, the demolition of the shabby old car park will give Paigntonians some hope that better times are coming.
With millions of pounds in government money to spend, Torbay Council is making a start on some projects that have been on the books for years.
A combination of the aftershock of the covid pandemic, the escalating cost of living and the chaos in the economy wreaked by the short-lived Liz Truss leadership meant the previous Lib Dem/Independent council administration faced huge problems getting contractors to start projects.
They started pulling down the derelict Crossways shopping centre only to find no ‘end user’ prepared to take on the job of building something new.
Now the Conservative administration elected in May is bringing in the bulldozers to reduce another town centre landmark to a pile of stones - a decision it took before losing two of its Tory group councillors and ultimately overall control at the Town Hall.
Deputy council leader Chris Lewis (Con, Preston) says the work at Garfield Road is part of an ambition to ‘deliver priority capital projects’ and bring in more private investment to give the bay’s town centres a new lease of life.
The word ‘deliver’ has been the council’s buzz-word since the elections earlier this year, and it will be interesting to see if the authority can now succeed where other efforts have foundered in recent years.
One thing is clear, and that is that Torbay Council will no longer be going into the building business itself.
In the last few years the council has embarked on ambitious building projects, handing over the keys to a new Wickes store at Edginswell and battling the prevailing economic storms to build a hotel for Premier Inn at The Terrace, among others.
But Cllr Lewis and his cabinet have been clear that the council’s building days are over, at least as far as the current administration is concerned. The Town Hall will work with a major regeneration partner and enable specialist developers to come in and take on its big capital projects.
But it will not be taking on building projects itself. Leave that to the experts, says Cllr Lewis. They know what they are doing.
This could be the making of the bay’s regeneration projects, which have the potential to transform all three town centres in the council’s footprint.
The council is confident, and the demolition men (and women) move on to the Garfield Road site to make the latest bold statement for the future of Paignton.
A regeneration partner firm is already on board, although the council has not yet named it. It will be a ‘household name’, though, we are told, and will take the council’s hand as it spends the government largesse to change the face of the three towns.
In the current economic climate, it will need all of its experience and expertise to pull it off.