Town centre ideas

over-egg the

Boston pudding

Amidst the reports to the cabinet regarding Boston town centre is an interesting one from a firm of consultants commissioned by Visit Lincolnshire.
As is sadly so often the case, it takes its view from the perspective of how to make the town centre more attractive to visitors as a way of enhancing the economy of the town.
Our own view is that the priority should be to make Boston more attractive to people as a place to live, which would assist with job creation – importantly the creation of jobs of a higher calibre than at present – which would attract better class shops, improve property values, and retain the money that is earned in the community, as people would have no need to leave town to do their spending.
Again, we feel that another problem is that the ingredients of the Boston pudding are often over-egged.
In its list of Boston’s “extensive and fine heritage assets” the report lists the Stump and the Guildhall, but after that the descent is r apid, including as it does the Assembly Rooms and the Exchange Buildings. The report also makes much of our “historic lanes” – more in fact than they are worth in their present form.
There is no argument about their potential, but the sort of changes that need to be made to improve the look of the centre are most probably not achievable in that they would require draconian powers over the owners and operators that do no exist in planning law.
The report also makes a lot of the Boston fishing fleet, but we think that this is such a shadow of its former self, that it is best left alone – especially the concept of an annual “shrimp festival.”
Whilst there is much that is worth reading in the report, there are also things that make us shudder.
The adoption of the name “Lanes” to bear comparison with the likes of York and Brighton would be sure to end in disappointment for the visitor – with Church Lanes, East Lanes and West Lanes suggested as forming a square with the “cultural quarter.”
This latter “quarter” should long ago have been renamed as there is little if anything “cultural” about it – especially since the demise of the useless Haven arts centre.
Similarly, the suggestion that Boston can compare with Liverpool’s “Three Graces” is disarmingly naïve when you consider the idea that the Royal Liver Building, the Cunard Building and the Port of Liverpool Building can be in any way spoken in the same breath as the Stump, the Assembly Rooms and the Exchange Buildings.
Whatever we do to try to improve Boston has to be realistic.
At the moment, a lot of people are talking the talk - but so far we have yet to find any who can walk the walk and produce sensible, realistic ideas.

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