Thinking of building? Then think of the community!

Nor even the supporters of the Town Park – which missed the opportunity of offering an underground solution – seeing it run out of money before the icing could be applied to their cake.

Across the road, there is a different story. I wonder if I was alone in marvelling at the speed with which the fate of the old Odeon cinema was settled. Maybe negotiations had been going on for some time, but right up until it burst into the media headlines, there were still many schemes being considered for its conversion and preservation.

Then, like an act of God, the deed was done and the Royal Court had put its seal on the agreement to turn the icon of celluloid entertainment into a temple of worship, community refuge and coffee-bar foyer culture. All for a £1 million purchase price and at least twice that to convert the place in compliance with health and safety and building regulations. It’s certainly more than ever goes into the Easter offering plate for the Anglican Rectors of this diocese.

For the particular religious community who will be able to celebrate their faith among the ghosts of the silver screen, it is probably a dream come true. They can rejoice in the use of a large and central premises – all the attributes that had put it on the shopping list of other organisations, such as those among the Island’s arts community, desperate to secure more performance and gallery space.

The Arts Centre, which operates throughout the year from its cramped but upwardly enthusiastic accommodation in Philips Street, was certainly on the look-out for a bigger auditorium, given the uncertainties now surrounding its tenure of St James, and would have been a candidate for converting the place into an cultural centre. But as a publicly funded organisation, the prospect of obtaining sufficient resources was out of reach.

So no avant garde films projected al-fresco onto the walls of the old cinema from the lawns of the Town Park during balmy summer evenings.

BUT all is not lost. What about the Island’s most lucrative construction site – the Waterfront? With the north-of-town masterplan no longer an option, what more deserving a location to revitalise with a people focus?

After one of the shortest histories of profitable trading, its current decline could surely be arrested by converting the ailing premises for cultural and hospitality use, breathing life into the hollow corridors of nearby Liberty Warf and transforming the area into a thriving visitor attraction.

I recall a couple of years ago filling in a feedback form on the original Esplanade Quarter proposals. It got high marks for joined-up architectural thinking but, even with the other boxes ticked, ‘nul points’ for excitement. Its dull, block-like functionality may have served to reduce the fearsome wind-tunnel effects which have been created by the mini Chicago tower developments springing up along the Esplanade and siphoning south-westerlies up the side streets leading from the shoreline into the old town, but it never felt like a location you would instinctively be drawn to for any activities remotely associated with fun.

Not far away, parish workers were recently putting the finishing touches to restoring the grass in Parade Gardens that had been crushed and scuffed out by the structure supporting the hugely popular ice rink during the Christmas period – an expensive temporary construction to rent, erect, dismantle and clear up afterwards.

An amenity like this, if located conveniently, could provide a year-round focal point. Every city has at least one. It doesn’t have to be bricks and mortar – think Eiffel Tower or London Eye.

Sea-facing resorts like ours have favoured maritime-related emblems, like Portsmouth’s Spinnaker Tower – an architectural landmark which says: ‘You’ve arrived, and this is us.’

In the past, ours would probably have been Elizabeth Castle, but that’s offshore and, sadly, increasingly inaccessible. We could do with an attractive feature among the bland Esplanade vegetable patch, otherwise the most prominent example of capital architecture on the south coast will be the Hopkins incinerator. Once the focus has been established, the cultural village would build around it.

Where, in the proposed publicly supported redevelopment of the existing Esplanade car park, is there provision for the general public to circulate, be entertained or be involved? With so many examples of long-term vacant office accommodation available in St Helier, it is difficult to be persuaded of the merits of embarking on ‘Son of Harcourt’ for commercial purposes at all, with the jackhammers of J1 about to resonate within earshot.

Building isn’t just for stuffing more anonymous commercial operatives into the same convenient boxes, or massaging the portfolios of ‘award-winning’ architects, even less because that’s what men in yellow jackets do. There’s a community to be considered.

Recently the Council of Ministers produced a ‘to do’ list of capital projects the length of your arm. Last week the Housing Minister was expressing his exasperation over the lack of affordable properties available on the local market.

There are clearly construction opportunities aplenty both in the private and public sector ready to boost the economy and enhance the Island’s way of life, if only we paid a little more attention to sensitivity, appropriateness and accountability – not forgetting that people make the places what they become, and not the other way around.