Deal Revealed
The Hastings Town Deal team will be hosting an open day at Priory Meadow shopping centre on Saturday 27 January to provide residents, businesses and visitors with updates on the various projects going forward within the £24.3m Town Deal regeneration programme.
Some of these projects have already been effectively completed and are up and running – or, in the case of Owens Entertainment Centre, up and apparently down again. The Town Deal website refers to seven overarching projects, forming an overall programme as follows:
- Town Centre Public Realm and Green Connections: the aim is to ‘transform’ the town centre into a ‘Garden Town’, with sustainable horticultural plantings, improved pathways for pedestrians and cyclists and enhanced infrastructure for markets, events and festivals.
- Hastings Castle World Heritage Destination: what’s currently described as a “neglected, inaccessible ruin” is to become the future centrepiece of the town’s tourist economy, with a new interpretation centre on the site of the vacant West Hill cafe.
- Enterprise and Employment Infrastructure: the upper floors of the old Debenhams building have been turned into flexible office and community space managed by Freedom Works; away from the town centre, 29 small business ‘incubator’ units have been built on two storeys at the Churchfields industrial estate.
- Green Low Carbon Skills and Economy: a new Green technology centre of excellence is in course of building at the East Sussex College campus in Ore; meanwhile, a partnership between Plumpton College and Hastings charity Education Futures Trust will offer land-oriented training and learning facilities at Lacuna Place in the town centre and at The Firs on Elphinstone Road.
- Town to Sea Creative Quarter: major works have already been advanced at the Observer Building and adjacent sites, managed by community land trust Hastings Commons – the focus is on arts, culture, wellbeing and digital services.
- Town Living: the aim is to deliver “quality affordable rented housing” in the town centre, though so far little detail has been given as to which sites are proposed to be either repurposed or built anew.
- Town Centre Core: a “strategic joint venture” between Hastings Borough Council and New River Real Estate Investment Trust to regenerate commercial areas of the town centre – again, little detail has yet been made publicly available on this, but New River describes itself as focused primarily on retail and leisure property.
The stated aim of the full programme is: “to rejuvenate and transform the town centre and make Hastings a healthy, vibrant, and quirky seaside town that people love to visit, live and work in”.
For further information, visit the central hub at Priory Meadow on 27 January. It will be manned between 10am and 4pm by members of the team and project leads, to whom questions may be put. Those interested may sign up to attend guided tours for some of the projects.
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I would like to know what kind of social housing is being considered for the town centreb
I am glad we got the funds but the Town Deal is mostly about the town centre. There is nothing being offered to St Leonards – let alone West St Leonards. Is it any wonder groups outside Hastings town centre do not bother to submit applications for innovative uses of those funds any more?