Can Market Place

businesses weather

the storm?

Even at this early stage, we seriously doubt whether the Market Place transformation will be finished on time.
There seems to be a pattern with major works far as Boston is concerned in that they take a long time, and seem to make little difference when completed.
One good example is the Spilsby Road/Freiston Road/Willoughby Road “improvements,” which we are sure could have been done in half the time, and now that they are complete seem to have had little, if any, impact on traffic flow.
We thought that the main idea was to stop the race between vehicles to funnel from two lines of traffic into one.
The obvious place for this to have been arranged was on Bargate Bridge itself, but traffic is still left in two forward lanes there, merging into one when the junction is crossed.
But back to the Market Place. This picture below was taken on Market Day a week ago and shows the stark divide created between the area now occupied by the market stalls, and the prime shopping area.
Note the absence of shoppers – something that we know is already hurting local traders considerably.

click on image to enlarge it

When we walked the area at the weekend, we were surprised to see how little has been done so far – yet for businesses in the area it is already the third week of struggling with rapidly falling returns.
Surely, something can and must be done to make the area more accessible so that people can still shop there with relative ease.
Yesterday the situation had become even worse.
More barricades had been erected so that on the Marks and Spencer side of the Market Place, the automatic doors to the shop - which are so helpful to the elderly and disabled in particular are no longer accessible - and pedestrians are guided through a corridor of barriers.
A similar situation was in operation near Boots Opticians.
It’s possible that one reason for the slow progress could be because of the “Big Dig,” which began on July 18th and ends on Sunday, and which has been made possible by more than £42,000 in grants.
But a reader tells us: “The activities have come to be known rather cynically as a 'scrape' rather than a dig, and have not yielded anything of any significance other than a bit of footwear. General opinion is that insufficient time was allowed on the two 'dig' sites undertaken to date. Which all begs the question - What has £42,800 been spent on?”
It’s a good point. We suspect that far more has probably been spent on children’s activities and musicians that has gone toward the dig itself
There is also a website http://www.bostonbigdig.org/ which includes a webcam “live from the site” with images that refresh automatically “every minute.”

click on image to enlarge it

Except that they don’t. The image is a static one and has been for days. And for some peculiar reason, Millets store name has been smudged out on the photo. And where’s the dig? The camera is pointing at two piles of gravel!

Sadly, a project that offers so much by way of promise has got off to a very poor start, compounded by the usual incompetence we associate with any pie in which Boston Borough Council has its civic finger in.
But the real issue is the future for some of the smaller traders who are being thrown overboard.
Not only must they endure eight months of isolation from the main stream of shoppers, but the next item on the list for the rebuilding of Boston will be the replacement of St Botolph’s footbridge - which will exacerbate matters still further.
Who would blame the owners of many of the smaller shops if they just decided to call it a day?
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