Town centre square

The new open space adjacent to Kendray St is looking really nice, and can't be long before it's open surely.

I do feel it just needs a few homely pieces to finish it off. The odd wino here, the beggar their, and the spice head here and it will be ready.

[I say the above in jest, I am not slagging the place off. Every town and city in the country is the same and it just proves society has failed but that's for another thread. This is about how the town is coming along].

 

Is that Nudgers bridge their building in the background?

 

It looks great.



This pic isn’t mine, it’s from the Barnsley & Surrounding Districts Facebook Page.

 

What's that huge gold coloured box?

 

Cineworld I believe.

 

is there anything opposite it with height, to try and balance it? It looks really out of keeping with the lower level units.

 

https://theglassworksbarnsley.com/

 

The new library is directly opposite it across the new square, similar aesthetic, but with a load more glass.

 

Thanks for that, the drone footage was helpful. I've only seen it from coming up Harborough Hill and seeing that from the back with what I'd guess is a car park.

It's obviously a massive improvement from what was there previously but i'm not sure how it ties in with existing architecture, or the scale of Cineworld to the heights of the other buildings.

 

That looks better, I don't think the end blocked in with cheap brick helps the cineworld part of it, then the huge block of matt gold above.

 

Yeah, I don't think the choice of materials does it any favours, but then again it's infinitely better than the brutalist nightmare that was there before!

 

It would have been nice to try and incorporate some of the local materials and nod towards the architecture that is around. Those bricks (or are they those horrible cladding blocks that look like bricks but are thin and just glued on?) are poor.

Pity. But given that Debenhams pulled out and the pandemic and brexit economic backdrop, at least something has gone ahead to breathe some life into that area.

 

Debenhams never pulled out of this scheme. They signed up to ‘Marketplace Barnsley’ with Odeon in 2011. That scheme was scrapped when the council couldn’t secure funding to build it.

 

I think we’ve discussed in plenty of other threads that the cladding isn’t that great, and that even a different colour could’ve improved things. But I thought this thread was specifically about the public realm improvements? I think it’s very easy to forget what that same area looked like just 6 years ago...

 

I know they were due to take the CEAG site and that was a long time ago. My mum worked in a Debenhams concession and was due to move to the Barnsley site when completed. Obviously Debenhams pulled out/decided not to fully commit (at whatever stage) and there issues are widely known.

 

Has anything been done to the facades of Boots and that run of shops to try and marry it in? Or are there future plans beyond this? Is it a multistage project?

 

The issue with the view from that side is that the building is two storeys higher due to the servicing yard underneath, and there’s no shop frontage. That one tiny window underneath the car park is part of the Next unit and that’s it.

 

That was a much bigger scheme which included the complete demolition of the Metropolitan Centre. The CEAG site was going to be a multi storey car park with multiple connections to the shopping centre on the opposite side of the railway. Contracts with anchor tenants were signed to try and secure private funding. It was obvious very quickly that it was never going to ahead. It’s a good job really!

The plans for it might still be available on the council planning portal.

 

I’m not sure. The council will need to find the funding for it if it’s something they want, and then probably negotiate with the owners to get the work done. I’m pretty sure they don’t own that side.