Still time for Boston to shine

We warned that this would happen.
When Boston was awarded almost £53,000 in government money to help attack the blight that empty shops in the town are causing, it decided to split the cash three ways.
The lion's share - £30,000 - is to go on "the creation of a community hub and leisure/creative activities centre" run by a member of the "third sector" - ie a charity organisation, in this case the Community and Voluntary Service. Don't you love the way the jargon is piling up this early in the tale?
This "hub" will be in the former Sketchleys and adjoining Card Fayre shop, which have been let for a peppercorn rent of £1 shop year.
While this part of the project is underway, a short-term plan costing £12,000 will see the windows of empty shops in the town centre decorated with vinyl graphics of images of Boston created by local people - whether photos, drawings or paintings, which will then be used as an art display when the hub opens. It's not clear whether this means that the empty shop windows will re-emerge or not.
The third part of the plan is the most important, and therefore, as we are in Boston, gets the least money - £10,000 to help reduce start up and operating costs to attract new businesses.
All of this is being done under the slogan "My Boston," and will be illustrated by a logo designed by students at Old Leake’s Giles School (see below.)

It's bright. It's eye catching. It's obvious.

But, less exciting is the way the project is being run.

Involve the local council, the equally irrepressibly lacklustre Boston BID, and a bunch of local charities, and you create a recipe for spending money to least effect.

Without denigrating the skills of the locals, we feel that somehow a mish-mash of photos, paintings and the like will look little different to the posters for circuses that usually adorn the windows of empty shops.

Once again, Boston has been set a challenge, and has failed to meet it. Its solution to the problem is dull, lacking in imagination, bog-standard, and pathetic. A bunch of the great and the good of the town are doing what they do best.

Contrast what's planned here with the situation in Whitley Bay, where the council and chamber of trade faced the same problem of empty shops.

One of them looked like this ...

But simply by using cost effective vinyl, it was turned into this ...

... a faux delicatessen, with promotional material suggesting to would be entrepreneurs that a shop such as this would be most welcome.
There's still time for Boston to think bigger -but somehow, we don't think the phrase is in the vocabulary of the powers that be.
The only light on the horizon is an application to  tomorrow's meeting of the Performance Review  and Governance Committee to call in the cabinet decision on this and put it before the full council, for proper discussion. Let us hope the appeal succeeds.


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