West Street latest score: Plans 0 - People with plans 2

There's an interesting rumour doing the rounds which claims that Primark is planning to take over the former Woolworths site in Strait Bargate.
Something like that would be good news indeed, as it would not only bring appropriate shopping to Boston, but it do much to lighten the encroaching bleakness afflicting this particular part of town.
The area of Bargate around W H Smith is beginning to look like a ghost town, as empty stores continue to deteriorate and there seems little hope on the horizon that new occupants will come to the rescue.
And whilst you might think it difficult to get excited about turning a bombsite into a car park, but that seems to be what Boston BID has just done.
Its leader, Niall Armstrong, has called the plan to bulldoze the former Regal Centre site and create fifty low cost parking places for a temporary term of up to three years, "very good news."
He claims that West Street is "the next focus area under the clean and attractive part of the BID business plan..."
So where is the first?
We assume it is the Pescod Square/Bargate area - and if that is the case we have to say that we have noticed little by way of change.
But to go back to West Street....
The Regal Centre site has apparently been bought by a local businessman who clearly sees it as a cash generator whatever happens.
Although it already appears as part of the West Street redevelopment plans, the new owner tells the local press that he is in talks with the developer, Modus, for the site to become a central part of the Merchants Quay development - almost as though it is separate from rather than an integral part of the plans. If that fails, he says he'll go ahead with his own plans for a £2.8 million five storey shopping centre with parking and flats.
However, the permission granting the pro tem car park application is clear that "the site is allocated as a regeneration/redevelopment site as contained within the Boston Borough Interim Plan in an area where policy RTC ll supports mixed use developments. The use of this site as a permanent car park would represent an inappropriate and inefficient use of the land which would undermine the overall aim of economic, social and environmental regeneration of this part of the town centre. This temporary permission is essential to ensure the long term future use and development potential of the site meet the objectives of Policy RTC II."
We can't see how the future plans for the site will change even if Modus were to withdraw from proceedings, as we assume that redevelopment of the area would remain a goal but with a new developer - and that piecemeal development would not be allowed.
We are afraid that we are already hearing echoes of some of the problems that bedevilled the Pescod Square project and others all those years ago.
There will be, wethinks, what people like to call interesting times ahead.

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