It is one of the many curiosities of Fort Regent that it has seen more battles as a fading public leisure centre, than it ever did as a Napoleonic fortification.
One of the philosophical questions asked during this week’s Budget debate, was “what sort of Jersey do we want?” and, once again, Fort Regent has become emblematic of the different perspectives on that question.
For some, it is in endanger of becoming a rerun of the saga of the new hospital project; it is a cipher for the perceived decay of Jersey’s infrastructure in recent decades which has suffered from systemic under-investment, to the point Ministers now find themselves in, where whichever road they take presents a multi-million pound toll.
That is tacitly admitted in the fact that we will be borrowing £43m just to get the Fort into a state when we can actually do something with it – and that price tag goes up with every year we ponder which way to go. It is now £43m just to get to the start line, and that is in the context of a Budget which redirects money from our reserves, and increases our borrowing. On this side of the argument, it is clearly money we don’t have.
Or, do you see it as an opportunity? Once the £43m has been borrowed and spent to make it usable, might the private sector take a lease – or make a purchase – to help redevelop it into a facility of which the island can be truly proud?
On that road, the final destination remains unclear; but at least we no longer have a steadily decaying public asset which grows in cost and embarrassment with every passing year.
So, look over your shoulder, and see the Fort as symptomatic of the major spending problems now facing the island, and the amount it is now going to take to get it back on the right track again; or, look forward, and see if as a valuable asset, which if used creatively, could still be the island’s premier leisure venue, and somewhere for future generations to really enjoy.
One Fort, two directly opposing perspectives. The one clear error in the above is to wonder if the Fort might become the next hospital debate. In fact it’s the other way around. It’s the hospital debate which was actually a rerun of the Fort, a site which has long been the prime exemplar of what happens when a vital public asset is left to rot.
