Any first-time visitor to Harrogate walking out of the station could be forgiven for thinking they had somehow ended up in Chisinau — the capital of Moldova.
Now I’ve never actually been to Chisinau, but I’ve travelled through enough ex-Soviet states to become familiar with their style of town planning: massive roads designed for military parades, vanity projects and concrete-heavy delusions of grandeur.
When you leave the station, cross the Station Parade mini-motorway towards the still-controversial Victoria Shopping Centre, you are confronted with closed shops, as if the whole shopping centre has packed up.
Close your eyes and the soundtrack is a line of taxis revving diesel engines, something more in keeping with Bangkok than Harrogate. Now look up and you’ll see North Yorkshire’s version of a skyscraper — the Exchange building looming overhead (still one of Harrogate’s great planning mysteries).
But for crying out loud: this is meant to be a famous, elegant spa town in North Yorkshire! And yet this particular corner could be almost anywhere. Anywhere except Harrogate.
Correct me if there is someone out there – dear Harrogate readers – but I’d be surprised if any local would put this area in their top twenty favourite parts of Harrogate. For me, it is probably the least Harrogate part of Harrogate.
In fact, some visitors could be forgiven for getting straight back on the train and trying York or Knaresborough instead.
What seems clear to me is that something needs doing — that, I hope we can agree on. Can we?
Whether the Station Gateway plans are the right answer, I do not know.
Like most locals, I can see both sides of it, though the prevailing mood is very much against the development.
I also understand the scepticism because, if we really drill down into why people are hostile to the scheme — and its various incarnations — I think it boils down to a loss of trust that any local, or perhaps even national, public project will actually be delivered well.
Nationally, we have lost confidence in our institutions. My sense is that our institutions have lost confidence in themselves, too.
My take is that even if the scheme had been developed by the world’s leading designers, with the world’s leading builders lined up, artwork by David Hockney, opened by Beyoncé and Ed Sheeran, and Harrogate Spring Water announcing they had abandoned any plans for Rotary Wood, the public mood would still be one of scepticism.
That is the issue: trust.
When we – I – think of Station Gateway, we imagine a slow, painful and expensive HS2-style debacle, overseen by the “lanyard class”. If “they” say it will take two years, it will be four. If it is planned to cost £14m, then the cost will be closer to £28m. That’s what people think, I think.
We have seen this movie before.
We have sat in enough traffic queues staring at temporary traffic lights wondering whether the country – and our county – has lost the ability to build things – or even to organise things – properly.
The recent Harrogate roadworks often felt as though Liz Truss, Dean Gaffney and the Sugar Puffs Monster had somehow ended up in charge of operations.
And if roadworks can are an omnishambles, then people wonder how anyone is expected to oversee a much larger project.
Despite this background, I keep coming back to this: If the Station Gateway money does not get spent on Harrogate, it will get spent somewhere else. And of all the places in Harrogate that could do with improvement, I struggle to think of many areas that need it more than this one.
The talented Vicky Carr absolutely nailed this better than I have in her article here, which I commend to you if you missed it the first time.
Now, with a longer lens, we all know that Harrogate has relied heavily on the ambition of previous generations who gave us The Stray, Valley Gardens, the Turkish Baths and more besides. What are we — the present generation — leaving for future generations? Anything?
There is a Greek proverb that societies grow strong when old men plant trees under whose shade they will never sit.
Harrogatonians of he past understood that. That’s how the cherry blossom was planted.
Although, to be fair to modern Harrogate, it is not as if nothing has improved.
Now Hornbeam Park will not get Free Walking Tour from Harry. Nobody has taken a wedding photograph there – not even beside the pyramid. But Hornbeam was an upgrade and I have yet to meet anyone who thinks it should never have been built.
So, improvement is possible within my lifetime. And the Stray Ferret itself — though imperfect — has also made our town better.
And if we residents are expected to live with major disruption, then we deserve more than consultation theatre. That was one of the reasons I built Suffrago here in Harrogate. Not Silicon Valley – more Silicon Valley Gardens!
And with my founder of Suffrago hat on, we have launched a live Station Gateway poll, with more than 700 local residents already voting and leaving comments. You can vote here.
Think of Suffrago as YouGov meets Survey Monkey, but built locally for local decisions like this.
And whether you support the plans, oppose them entirely, or sit in the – meh – middle-ground as my teenagers would say, the current station area is more Moldova than Montpellier.
