I don’t think any of the Thanet tourist attractions were
more cost effective than the heritage pontoons. The way the worked was that
people paid reduced mooring fees to keep heritage vessels opposite the café
culture.
I wasn’t an easy place to moor but the boat owners put up
with the problems of having there boats there so we could all enjoy them.
There isn’t an alternative use for this part of the harbour
as it lacks the security and facilities for pontoons there to be used in the
ordinary way.
Back in 2010 the council decided this wasn’t such a good
idea and told the owners of these boats they would have to pay almost full
mooring fees so off they went.
Well now the council have removed the pontoons altogether,
they seem to be saying too expensive to maintain, although frankly trying to
contact the council to find out about this didn’t go too well as I just got put
through to a phone that no one answered.
There is of course the foi request route which is expensive
for the council and time consuming for me so I haven’t bothered to pursue it.
Work on the Royal Victoria Pavilion seem so be going on at a
pace, as far as I can ascertain the asbestos removal is now complete and
contractors are removing the inside.
A note here the Pav which was first built
in 1903 as been gutted inside several times and also had a major fire plus
numerous minor ones.
The inside is basically modernish buildings built inside
the outer shell. Here is the link to the pictures I took on the inside http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/pictures-of-inside-of-royal-victoria.html
The Pleasurama site is still deserted and the
most recent cliff repairs starting to sprout vegetation, it’s difficult to know
where this one will go, it still looks like a land banking operation to me. I can’t
see any reputable developer starting work there without a flood risk assessment
and a proper assessment of the cliff, both in terms of how safe it would be for
people to live under and in terms of how close anything can be built to it to
allow for economic cliff maintenance for the life of any development there.
Michael
ReplyDeleteShame about the Heritage Pontoons, but they haven't looked in particularly good condition for sometime. I suspect that this is another one of those ideas where it was fairly easy to get the initial capital funding, but any maintenance and repairs would have to come out of revenue - not easy when the Port and Harbour, taken together, are reported to be making a loss. Sad, but a problem that seems to common, not just in Thanet, but across the country and certainly in the parts of Spain and the USA that I've visited recently.
At least the Pav seems to be moving in the right direction.