Nick Bye: We must embrace change for Torquay town centre

Is there anything more anyone could possibly write about Torquay town centre?

It seems to be the focus of so much negative energy & in danger of defining the image of the whole town. As someone who is in reality a Paigntonian simply on loan to the place until all the hills get the better of me, I feel the negative press is somewhat unfair. As I have written before, where else could I live with such a stunning natural environment, theatres & eating houses on my doorstep (nearly) plus the history & charm of places such as Cockington, Torre Abbey, the picturesque harbour & Daddyhole Plain; never mind all the parks & gardens, coastal walks & beaches?

But mention "Torquay" to some folk & they will say how it's gone downhill & take pity when you mention it's home.

In reality they are generally referring to the town centre & all the social "issues" which in truth are fairly common to all the big seaside resorts. In a relatively short time we have gone from somewhere which would be packed out with high spending visitors for five or six months of the year to a town where health & social care are the biggest source of jobs, older people come to retire & much of the redundant holiday accommodation has been turned into bedsits, flatlets & homes in multiple occupancy. So it's hardly surprising our town centre doesn't exactly resemble Kensington High Street.

But there are signs of hope & to begin with I would like to say thank you to all those who put together our recent "This is My Circus" mini festival which brought together all age groups & backgrounds to showcase art & culture of all types in some of our empty shops & other unlovely spaces.

I was delighted to enjoy a preview as well as a taste of some of the activities including music & art displays in Union Square. Unfortunately the weather was very much "against" when I showed my face on the Sunday morning but was told the Saturday had been really busy & the entertainment in particular greatly appreciated. The artwork has certainly brightened the place up & the mural on the side of the Castle Inn facing Factory Row is a fitting legacy.

It was great to attend the wrap up event at the Royal Lyceum Theatre on Abbey Road, the home of Unleashed Theatre Company who do such amazing work with so many groups of people.

Indeed the Royal Lyceum Theatre is a clue to what the future might be like: a town centre which is home to a wide range of activities, organisations & businesses rather than just a retail centre. The Council's plans for Union Square complement this vision by introducing more housing & health facilities as well as creating a small open space to provide an enhanced setting for our splendid old market building.

The trend is already clear in the move away from retail to a broad range of services including salons of one sort or another, eating houses (you really should try Zuki's if you enjoy generous portions of Turkish food), dentists, opticians & other health professionals. For example we have the Torbay Community Diagnostic Centre in the former Morrisons convenience store at the bottom of Market Street. It's on my walking route to the Town Hall so could easily pop in to have my blood pressure checked on the way to or from meetings, which might be useful.

Further up the town we now have the Cue Sports Academy in the former Argos premises & just a few yards away the New Central Cinema in the old BHS building. Those with good memories will recall this is just about the spot where we had the old Colony Cinema, which is somewhat ironic.

If you could go back in time you would find Torquay town centre was a much more mixed up sort of place than the late Twentieth Century retail centre which folk mostly choose to recall. There were public houses & inns, churches, places of entertainment, auctioneers & offices, you name it. Even I remember Fleet Street had more estate agents premises than you could shake a stick at.

Then along came the bulldozers & everything which could be flattened was flattened to make way for new shops. Premises HAD to be used for retail, planning policies made it difficult to obtain consent for other uses & landlords had a preference for the national chains believing they would be most likely to pay the rent.

In fairness Torquay was a very attractive retail centre as recently as twenty five years ago, certainly the major retail centre in South Devon & almost on a par with Plymouth & Exeter despite our smaller population.

So the recent decline has been quite dramatic & in part perhaps due to this very reliance on retail. Sadly the geography of the town centre which comprises a long "strip" in an old river valley makes further redevelopment quite impractical, certainly on the lines of Princesshay at Exeter, Drakes Circus at Plymouth or out at the Willows. We simply haven't got the (level) space.

So we have to do something different, to evolve into a place of entertainment, eating out, meeting up with friends, seeing the doctor or getting a haircut with retail retreating to a minority of activity.

Paignton by contrast already has many of the ingredients to make a "post retail" town centre & I take some pride in the Library & Information Centre, also the Palace Theatre which goes from strength to strength. You have a busy transport hub with the bus station & train station close together; the Dartmouth Steam Railway just yards away, then the historic Picture House Cinema in the process of renovation at the top of Torbay Road, which is certainly a place of entertainment leading to the Vue Cinema & adjacent children's Geoplaypark. Paignton always seems to be buzzing when I visit.

All towns need someone to talk the place up as there are always more than enough who are happy to talk it down.

I was very disappointed when the town centre BID (Business Improvement District) project came to an end as in its early days it was very much focused on promoting the town centre, organising events & encouraging investment. Hopefully we should have a new Town Centre Manager in place soon. The budget was agreed a while ago.

There are also hopes for new names being attracted to Fleet Walk plus much needed investment in the basic infrastructure.

So in a nutshell we need to embrace change. We need to make Torquay more like Paignton or even the thriving place our grandparents might have enjoyed: somewhere to go for entertainment & a whole range of activities, where more people lived & called home! In this case the future might be very much like the past.