They look so cute, those three-dimensional architects’ models which cost a fortune to produce and reveal so little – a toytown of neat blocks with trees a-plenty, rarely a car in sight, and certainly no people.

We’ve seen it all before – the serried ranks of uniform mini-blocks which so delighted Planning when the Esplanade Quarter was revealed. Now another cardboard and paste master plan for the north of town promises to spread even more ‘excitement’ into an area long thirsting for regeneration, one which has laid low while bluster and neglect have ebbed and flowed over its future.

The initial ‘Millennium’ in the title was dropped with acknowledged embarrassment, given that the advent of the millennium which was to herald this new beacon of greenery within the town precincts is now a fading memory.

The trouble is, I suppose, that we’ve let ourselves get hung up on the concept of a park in the area without considering what in 2009 – not 2000 – is the most appropriate use of the site, or parcels of it.

Nobody actually had any real strategic idea about what the area was going to be. As one of the remaining open spaces left in the heart of old St HeIier, of course, it cried out to remain open for communal amenity use. Those with vision proposed digging out all the old soil (some of it possibly contaminated, following its former use as a gas works), burying a new car-park, which is its current useful function, and greening that over.

Good idea, you might have thought. But no. No one wanted to get their hands dirty with more ‘dodgy’ spoil – enough of that was being generated elsewhere and interred in the reclamation site.

And while developers were all focusing their sights on the speculative bonuses from the creation of more prestige finance industry palaces by the sea, the collective eyes were off the little white ball in the bunker.

But with question marks hanging over the viability of other ‘showcase’ schemes, back comes the Town Park Plus opportunity.

The renewed ‘excitement’ effervescing from Planning might just have something to do with the fact that the new scheme generates ample pickings from the usual suspects whose architectural thumbprints seem to have become a ‘must’ in any local municipal development.
We were told it was the only way we were going to have any progress, since the costs – which back in the 90s when the idea first was mooted stood at £38 million – would be borne by the developers, not the taxpayers.

But sorry folks, it won’t actually be the area you expected. In short, it’s going to be gobbled up round the edges by multi-occupancy dwellings. Of course the provision of much needed housing is paramount – so long as those who really need it get a look in – but saying that only developers’ involvement will save the scheme is another way of presenting them with a golden commercial opportunity, since by becoming champions of a famous community project, while inadvertently bailing out a knotty political embarrassment, they won’t expect too many Planning objections.

Enter the ‘people’s champion’ with a proposition to the States demanding £10 million of public money to create the park, and the farcical intervention of the minister’s ring-file binder, which has bountifully moved both goalposts and the playing area.

So what are we going to have now? Will this be a park like any we know? Will it be a garden park, like Howard Davis, a venue for open-air events, or a bland bit of grass, like the Parade, which after dark acquires a quite different function for revellers than the occasional daytime office sunbathers and sandwich munchers?

And who will maintain this lung of vegetation when everywhere else TTS has scaled back garden maintenance, leaving only shrubs and the occasional herbaceous border?

There is a Jonah within me desperately crying: ‘Please think this through!’ It’s one thing to shop window a clever plan and take the heat out of the demands for something to be done, but it’s something else to embark on another costly exercise which bears all the hallmarks of inbuilt obsolescence.

Let’s be spared more years of traditional muddled decisions which have seen a toll of uncertainty and blight resulting in the demolition of housing nearby, first with the intention of providing a multi-storey car park, then to be rebuilt with a car park underneath. Now, the shoppers’ car park in Minden Place, which has just undergone an expensive refit, finds itself for the chop, with yet another question mark over the long-term use of the site.

We’re all aware of a desire to reduce car use in town, and closing a sprawling, untidy parking facility ticks some of the boxes, but there’s clearly a balance to be struck between the private mobility and commercial vibrancy – replacing brown-site convenience with what could quickly become a shabby village green, such that traditional town-centre commerce closes for lack of patrons while new and refurbished establishments remain bereft of takers.

Failing to think things through could in the end deal the coup de grâce to St Helier as a trading centre just as effectively as the credit crunch has the potential to call a halt to those other mega development aspirations near the waterfront.

Come to think of it, one of the more pleasant open spaces established recently, which is now surrounded by thriving vegetation, with access to the sea and sunshine is none other than … the Esplanade car park. Guess what’s due to happen to that!