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Folkestone Town Centre Development

Written by Editor

Thursday, 11 October 2007

Since the late 1950s Folkestone has been made a number of promises relating to developing the town centre. An early development was to take in the old Plumber Rodis building at the top of the Old High Street, now a Pizza Bar and build a covered mall to what was Bobbies Corner and take in the Bus Station, Alexandra Gardens, The Old Jenners site and Gun public house. During the 1960s and early 1970s Christ Church School and much of the old town was demolished to build a motorway through the town centre, a one-way system, a new block of offices and multi storey car park. If you have ever drive through Folkestone you wonder way the near motorway stops at a roundabout and forces the traffic back into narrow curving streets. There are two reasons given for this, the first is the town run out of money, the second is the bridge that was intended to take traffic over Foord Road and the Olby and Coop site linking with Dover Road would have necessitated the demolition of the library or Harvey Grammar School [Now Grace Chapel] Instead traffic is dumped into a one-way system that sends visitors to Dover or Canterbury. Missing out the several other town centre developments that have failed over the past fifty years for one reason or another including refusing Key Mart permission to build a supermarket on the old Jenners site because it was in yellow brick and then build the Welfare Tower in a yellowish brick and Sainsbury supermarket to look like a replica of the Kremlin is a little surprising but that is town planners for you. After much debate and argument about flats and colour etc, for the first time since the 1970s we can see a major development taking shape in the heart of Folkestone. Though it is not what it started out to be it is something new to look forward to. It seems like only weeks ago that the site was a car park, now it is a network of steel girders; reinforcing and grey poured concrete climbing out of the ground. For many the development holds the prospect of proper jobs and a future, for others somewhere new to shop, for some it is a scar on Folkestone’s landscape they are going to have to get use to. Will the development attract visitors? If it is the same town centre retailers you find in the cloned town centres of many other English towns then the answer has to be no, will Shepway shoppers that go to other towns now shop in Folkestone, some possibly. Will it drive business out of the town; some say it has already hence Marks & Spencer departing after 100 years. The development has also had some positive affects; Guildhall Street has two new shops with modern shop fronts, there is activity at the old Courts shop and given time, improved shop fronts and increased commercial rents and rates the style of retail will change forever in Guildhall Street. There is some concern that the centre of Folkestone will move away from Sandgate Road causing the loss of retailers and more empty shops. Sandgate Road has been continually in a state of flux for the past forty years, the list of shops that have come and gone is a long one: Sainsbury, International Stores, Timothy Whites and Taylor’s, Menace Smith, Peter Dominic’s, a Bank, two hotels and a pub, a Dairy, several cloths shops, a restaurant, a cigarette shop from both ends, Cinema, four cinemas from the town centre, Tesco, Green Grocers, Burtons, Walters Furniture [Bouverie Square], Lukey, Gas Board, Electricity Board, and many other shops that have long been forgotten. Sandgate Road has had five stable shops: Debenhams [Bobbies], WH Smith, Boots, Woolworth and Marks & Spencer, six if you include Oakley’s. It is regrettable that Marks & Spencer felt it was time to depart but Sandgate Road will survive though not in its present format. The real concern for Folkestone’s future has to be Rendezvous Street, the link between the old town and new, if the retailers in Rendezvous Street, who are struggling now, cannot survive, then Rendezvous Street will go the same way as Guildhall Street, The Old High Street and Tontine Street, once the centre of Folkestone. Perhaps Roger De Haan’s Master Plan in context of the town centre development is the only way to save the old town area, you only wish De Haan had called it something other than his “Master Plan”. The entertainment area has moved away from Folkestone’s West End over the past thirty years to the Tontine Street area and with a new theatre planned Rendezvous Street might become the restaurant and fancy bar area of the town reflecting the café society of Mr. Blair though that would be the death knell of Bouverie Road West and Folkestone’s West End. Comments Add New Search Write comment Name: Email:  do not notifynotify Website: Title: UBBCode:         -color-aquablackbluefuchsiagraygreenlimemaroonnavyolivepurpleredsilvertealwhiteyellow -size-tinysmallmediumlargehuge     Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image. Powered by !JoomlaComment 3.12 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.

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