SO what is a ‘gateway’? What should it espouse? In its broadest sense, it’s an ‘entrance point’.
From triumphal arch to subterranean traitors’ gate – it’s the point you have to pass through to get to the other side.
Your IT gateway will probably display an enticing front page as a helpful welcome to the virtual offerings on your site. Go back a while and on the gateways of medieval towns you’d have been more likely to encounter the heads of disgraced politicians, knaves and vagabonds, severed and mounted on pointy stakes ‘pour décourager les autres’.
I pose the question because of how frequently the term ‘gateway’ has been used in the context of the construction of the new La Collette incinerator and the alleged blighting of the south coast approaches to St Helier.
In fairness, it normally falls from the lips of those resisting industrial development in the area, who would see the ramparts of Fort Regent – we’re not allowed to talk about the roof any more – resplendent on a green hill without our city wall.
For them our port gateway should conjure up a romantic picture postcard vista – perhaps akin to St Malo. Well, according to the Transport Minister, during the incinerator debate in the House, these days, most visitors arrive by air anyway, and by the time ferry passengers are within visual contact of the Harbour, they’re probably being herded down to the car deck for a quick exit.
Well, so be it, and perhaps we should all be thinking of this once fashionable promenade area as our Island’s ‘back’ door, where rubbish is traditionally left for disposal. But that, of course, ignores totally the plight of local residents, who will have no choice but to stare daily at the grubby industrial sprawl unwanted anywhere else, haemorrhaging along the artificial wasteland. One day someone will compose a lament for La Collette, for, as Constable Crowcroft suggested in last week’s debate, once the area is fixed as an industrial zone – that’s what it’ll remain.
With impeccable timing, the day after the incinerator at La Collette was approved, plans emerged for a massive development of the surrounding area to include a substantial amount of Waterfront housing and an ambitious project to move harbour and fuel facilities. Now, it may just be that having had so much dosh approved for the energy-from-waste plant one day, the planners have been reinvigorated with a lust for municipal project-spend. But, assuming these sort of schemes don’t draw themselves up overnight, you can’t help feeling that those keen to spend the cash, were already confident of the outcome of the vote in the States.
The only surprise was if they were that certain, why didn’t they get on with it sooner, skip the phoney ‘consultation’ and save the balance between the £60m in 2003 and the £106m today to put towards their grandiose new Island Plan. So, the new incinerator comes with a gold-plated ministerial promise that it won’t pollute like the old one did. That’s reassuring but not entirely the point. It’ll be unnecessarily huge – courtesy of the Planning Minister’s obsession with the Hopkins toy-box and ‘award-winning’ architectural designs better suited to industrial settings far removed from a once picturesque seaside environment. Its associated industrial activity will overshadow all developments within a mile radius. You can’t help feeling that having at last relieved the long-suffering residents of Bellozanne Valley, a carbon copy will be served up for their successors anywhere near the proposed housing estates on the Elizabeth Harbour site.
Now, the idea of relocating the port facilities across the Harbour in the La Collette reclamation site does have much to recommend itself. At the time the blueprint for a ‘St Helier harbour for the 21st century’ was mooted back in 1985, there were many with professional knowledge of the local tidal conditions who argued against its present location. It has proved unpopular with ferry captains forced to manoeuvre their vessels in shallow waters against gusting winds. Also, the current gateway into the adjacent marina throttles the free passage of yachts into the basin.
You only have to visit Elizabeth Castle to see how at low tide the existing port facilities opposite are left high and dry, while further south the reclamation site which Transport and Technical Services is currently busily filling in remains lapped by clear deeper water. In short, the marina should migrate south too, and the infill be concentrated back at the shore-line.
Whether demolishing a £2 million functioning structure completed less than 20 years ago can escape an accusation of profligate ‘afterwards thinking’ will depend on the strength of the proposition, those advocating it and the funds at their disposal. As will the small matter of access from the new, more remote, terminal through the increased industrial traffic heading to the incinerator. But hey, thanks to Hopkins, its sheer bulk will at least offer shelter from all those nasty south easterly breezes blowing across the sandy beaches east of Havre des Pas.
And no sooner has all the fuss about the risks of a Buncefield-like conflagration from a fuel farm nestling alongside an industrial incinerator plant been extinguished, ‘Hey presto’, another change of mind and the tanks get their marching orders offshore to create our very own Three Mile Island – too late, sadly, to permit the energy-from-waste plant inheriting their current location and potential screening from the south-east.
Now, like the American military, which insists on attaching a silly name to each of its costly escapades, what shall we call the new developments on harbour land? ‘Gateway Park’, perhaps? Somehow, I can’t help feeling the ubiquitous ‘Liberation’ will inevitably be slapped on them.
Leave the rubbish by the back door
SO what is a ‘gateway’? What should it espouse? In its broadest sense, it’s an ‘entrance point’.
From triumphal arch to subterranean traitors’ gate – it’s the point you have to pass through to get to the other side.
Your IT gateway will probably display an enticing front page as a helpful welcome to the virtual offerings on your site. Go back a while and on the gateways of medieval towns you’d have been more likely to encounter the heads of disgraced politicians, knaves and vagabonds, severed and mounted on pointy stakes ‘pour décourager les autres’.
I pose the question because of how frequently the term ‘gateway’ has been used in the context of the construction of the new La Collette incinerator and the alleged blighting of the south coast approaches to St Helier.
In fairness, it normally falls from the lips of those resisting industrial development in the area, who would see the ramparts of Fort Regent – we’re not allowed to talk about the roof any more – resplendent on a green hill without our city wall.
For them our port gateway should conjure up a romantic picture postcard vista – perhaps akin to St Malo. Well, according to the Transport Minister, during the incinerator debate in the House, these days, most visitors arrive by air anyway, and by the time ferry passengers are within visual contact of the Harbour, they’re probably being herded down to the car deck for a quick exit.
Well, so be it, and perhaps we should all be thinking of this once fashionable promenade area as our Island’s ‘back’ door, where rubbish is traditionally left for disposal. But that, of course, ignores totally the plight of local residents, who will have no choice but to stare daily at the grubby industrial sprawl unwanted anywhere else, haemorrhaging along the artificial wasteland. One day someone will compose a lament for La Collette, for, as Constable Crowcroft suggested in last week’s debate, once the area is fixed as an industrial zone – that’s what it’ll remain.
With impeccable timing, the day after the incinerator at La Collette was approved, plans emerged for a massive development of the surrounding area to include a substantial amount of Waterfront housing and an ambitious project to move harbour and fuel facilities. Now, it may just be that having had so much dosh approved for the energy-from-waste plant one day, the planners have been reinvigorated with a lust for municipal project-spend. But, assuming these sort of schemes don’t draw themselves up overnight, you can’t help feeling that those keen to spend the cash, were already confident of the outcome of the vote in the States.
The only surprise was if they were that certain, why didn’t they get on with it sooner, skip the phoney ‘consultation’ and save the balance between the £60m in 2003 and the £106m today to put towards their grandiose new Island Plan. So, the new incinerator comes with a gold-plated ministerial promise that it won’t pollute like the old one did. That’s reassuring but not entirely the point. It’ll be unnecessarily huge – courtesy of the Planning Minister’s obsession with the Hopkins toy-box and ‘award-winning’ architectural designs better suited to industrial settings far removed from a once picturesque seaside environment. Its associated industrial activity will overshadow all developments within a mile radius. You can’t help feeling that having at last relieved the long-suffering residents of Bellozanne Valley, a carbon copy will be served up for their successors anywhere near the proposed housing estates on the Elizabeth Harbour site.
Now, the idea of relocating the port facilities across the Harbour in the La Collette reclamation site does have much to recommend itself. At the time the blueprint for a ‘St Helier harbour for the 21st century’ was mooted back in 1985, there were many with professional knowledge of the local tidal conditions who argued against its present location. It has proved unpopular with ferry captains forced to manoeuvre their vessels in shallow waters against gusting winds. Also, the current gateway into the adjacent marina throttles the free passage of yachts into the basin.
You only have to visit Elizabeth Castle to see how at low tide the existing port facilities opposite are left high and dry, while further south the reclamation site which Transport and Technical Services is currently busily filling in remains lapped by clear deeper water. In short, the marina should migrate south too, and the infill be concentrated back at the shore-line.
Whether demolishing a £2 million functioning structure completed less than 20 years ago can escape an accusation of profligate ‘afterwards thinking’ will depend on the strength of the proposition, those advocating it and the funds at their disposal. As will the small matter of access from the new, more remote, terminal through the increased industrial traffic heading to the incinerator. But hey, thanks to Hopkins, its sheer bulk will at least offer shelter from all those nasty south easterly breezes blowing across the sandy beaches east of Havre des Pas.
And no sooner has all the fuss about the risks of a Buncefield-like conflagration from a fuel farm nestling alongside an industrial incinerator plant been extinguished, ‘Hey presto’, another change of mind and the tanks get their marching orders offshore to create our very own Three Mile Island – too late, sadly, to permit the energy-from-waste plant inheriting their current location and potential screening from the south-east.
Now, like the American military, which insists on attaching a silly name to each of its costly escapades, what shall we call the new developments on harbour land? ‘Gateway Park’, perhaps? Somehow, I can’t help feeling the ubiquitous ‘Liberation’ will inevitably be slapped on them.
Article posted on 16th July, 2008 - 2.00pm