Last updated at 11:37, Thursday, 28 January 2010

What is it about city planners? You wait years – decades even – for a place to be renovated, reborn, smartened up, then three different schemes all come along at once.

Three schemes for Carlisle – the ‘historic quarter’, the Court Square area outside the station and the shopping paradise known at St Nicholas Gate – are set for redevelopment.

The earth hasn’t moved yet, so I’m not getting too carried away, but it does seem as though cogs and wheels are slowly cranking.

The city/county council scheme to alter traffic flow and widen pavements in and around the Cathedral is long overdue.

The equation is simple: make visiting and shopping easier and less stressful and people will stay longer and are more likely to spend more.

But parking has to be looked at as a way to encourage people into the city, rather than as a money-making scheme for the council.

The Renaissance board have said they will start work on sorting out the chaos that you have to battle through if you want to use the rail system to and from Carlisle.

And a decision is due tomorrow on revamping St Nick’s.

Sadly, there’s been nothing saintly about this dreary run-down area for years.

It has been a prime example of how throwing up some quick-build, make-it-and-they’ll-come-and-spend-money stores really don’t work.

They look ugly and unappealing from the outside and their cold, barn-like interiors don’t encourage you to spend much time inside.

The best thing to be said about it is that it provided a rat-run for motorists looking to get onto and off London Road.

It should have been home to a new GP’s super surgery, but thoughtfully for all those struggling with ill-health, that is now being located up a 1-in-3 hill further along London Road where the buses don’t run so frequently and where there is less parking.

But now plans have been drawn up to tear part of it down and rebuild it, increasing the amount of shopping space.

First suggestions were dismissed by planners because they were “too contemporary” and didn’t fit in with nearby red brick buildings.

Shame this didn’t occur to anyone years ago when the plans seemed to be nicked out of the bin of some eastern-bloc town council.

Redeveloping this site should attract new businesses that will draw people who don’t just want cheap shoes and carpets.

The whole of Botchergate needs an economic defibrilator, hopefully this will mark the start of its, dare I say it, renaissance.

But the city council and Renaissance board have to raise their eyes above blueprints and road systems.

They have to work to attract some big name shops and other businesses to the city.

We can’t all be minimum wage shop assistants.

Carlisle is never going to be like Oxford or Cambridge, or Manchester or Leeds.

But the city should overtake places like Preston as a shopping, tourism and railway destination.

York and Chester are both steeped in history, but manage to have thriving business and shopping centres and draw in hundreds of thousands of tourists each year.

The fact that both have huge pedestrianised shopping areas may be a factor.

It didn’t happen overnight for them and lord knows we’ve waited long enough in Carlisle, but at last we might hear the distant rumble of the earth movers.

First published at 11:25, Thursday, 28 January 2010
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk