Jersey could take a leaf out of Blackpool’s book with a transformative future vision

Jersey could take a leaf out of Blackpool’s book with a transformative future vision

That’s how I’ve ended up doing a couple of reporting shifts a week here at the JEP. I’m also doing some radio presenting. And it’s that which has, this week, led me to Blackpool, from where I’m penning this column.

I was born near Manchester. I then grew up in South Africa before moving back to the UK and Blackpool back in 1985. My high-school years and early work life were Blackpool-based. The brash, bawdy seaside town famous for its tower and the annual illuminations lights show.

Returning after a long time away, and presenting at a radio station I last worked at in the year 2001 is akin to waking up from a coma. Everything feels like it was yesterday, yet a lot has changed.

Why do I mention this? Well, it occurred to me that the Blackpool experience is one Jersey could learn from.

In the past decade the seafront, known as the Golden Mile, has undergone a transformation. There are huge works of art along the prom, the roads and paths have been relaid to make them, frankly, nicer for both motorists and pedestrians, there’s a huge strip of land opposite Blackpool Tower that’s been emblazoned with classic quotes from comedians and comedy shows across the years. It’s called the Comedy Carpet and it’s brilliant.

But beyond the façade there have been strategic changes. The council bought Blackpool Tower and the Winter Gardens – home to a massive theatre, events space, and multiple food and drink outlets. They’ve contracted out the running of the tower, but they’ve set up their own company to run the Winter Gardens. Expansion plans there include a brand new grade A conference centre and high-end hotel. Alongside that, there’s private-sector investment in a new five-star hotel on the seafront in the middle of town and plans for something similar down the coast at the Pleasure Beach.

In other words, Blackpool is evolving.

It’s still a magnet for stag and hen dos (you’re never far from a group of men or ladies in outrageous outfits), but the town is also broadening its horizons.

The change feels joined up. There are new council offices beside a new retail and residential area. The tram tracks are being extended inland. There’s a buzz of optimism and ‘can do’ about the place, as well as an understanding that to stand still and do nothing is to accept decline.

Meanwhile, Jersey dithers on the biggest capital project in its history (the hospital). The roads become increasingly clogged up with Chelsea tractors so the rush hour is often indistinct from the build up during the rest of the day. And prime assets are left to go to ruin as politicians run scared from making a bold decision for fear of the green ink brigade, who act as keyboard warriors online or get personal in the letters page of this newspaper, launching their entirely predictable attacks.

We’ve reached a state of play where it’s possible that somebody born when plans for the new hospital were announced will be a teenager – yes, a TEENAGER – before it welcomes its first patient.

The bold projects – the finance centre, the redevelopment of the Airport and grand schemes for the harbour – are being delivered by arms-length bodies who are broadly free of political interference.

There’s got to be a better way.

This week we’re getting the warnings about the state of Fort Regent, as if it’s something new. We were shown fancy plans for its next incarnation years ago. Yet nothing.

Where’s the vision? Where’s the action?

Move the sport from the Fort to somewhere more suitable – maybe a state-of-the-art centre on land by the rugby club. Perhaps use the Fort as a site for a specialist university campus that could attract overseas students at a premium – focusing on finance or law or biodiversity… or all three. There could be student lodgings up there behind the fortress walls. They’ll survive without a view. They’re students.

Create a cultural hub opposite the Opera House (where the hospital currently is), bringing in the Arts Centre, and develop space for outdoor performances and a place for people in town to enjoy the fresh air and sunshine. A new place to ‘be’.

We could take the leap with electric vehicles. Start with electric buses. Incentivise (and I mean properly incentivise) electric cars over gas-guzzlers. Perhaps do that by turning Jersey into an Islandwide lab for battery manufacturers to test their inventions. Get on the phone to Tesla and Dyson. Make them an offer they can’t refuse. If there was a ready-made blob of land where an electric car should work, given our size and speed limits, it’s surely Jersey?

But as I sit here in the autumn sunshine on a breezy Blackpool prom, I realise I’m getting carried away. We can’t even get the simple task of building a very straightforward hospital for a small community right. What hope of the rest?

Come on, politicians. Be more Blackpool. And if that means strapping a blow-up doll, L-plates and a faux wedding veil to you to give you a bit of life, then so be it!

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