Proper Regeneration in the East End

[escotregen]

Now this is an example of how to go about genuine regeneration projects; local community engagement, high amenity sustainable re-use of an old industrial brownsite, involvement of local organisations... and it all came upwards from the grass roots. Well done Greenspace and the other parties:

Wasteland to urban park - Beardmore Park gets go-ahead
01/02/2005
Kelvin Clyde Greenspace's plan to transform a 1 hectare site of wasteland into a new urban park

The site was featured in the East End Eyesores Report of 2001 and is on the derelict land register but was unsuitable for housing due to ground pollution and its links with coal mining. Plans for the content of the park came about following extensive consultation between Kelvin Clyde Greenspace and representatives from the local community including local housing associations, pensioners, youth groups and primary schools. As a result Beardmore Park will feature a picnic area, a skateboard park, a kickabout football area, a community meeting area and an off-road track for cyclists.
Keen to maintain links with its industrial past, the site will also feature a 30 tonne steamhammer, dating from 1915. The steamhammer is currently being cleaned up ready to take its position in pride of place at the head of the triangular site, and will, it is hoped become a landmark of the east end. The name for the site also provide links to the past and was chosen by local residents after William Beardmore and Company, a heavy engineering firm which once made gun barrels in the area.

http://www.greenspacescotland.org.uk/de ... &textonly=

[Fat Cat]

Ah, yes, somewhere else for the neds to hang about drinking.

Will this be next to the new road that's going to blight the area?

[Apollo]

I wish them luck in their project, yes, really.

Coincidentally, I was in Myreside Street the other day, for some pics, and felt grateful to get out. The usual mob of youths was playing on the roof of the school at the top of Rigby St, and the feeling of 'a thousand eyes on my back' as a stranger, meant I left quickly. I had to drive this top part of Rigby St nightly, for access, for over a year, and often wished I'd gone round through Shettleston and back instead.

Anyway, Myreside St possibly contains the last bit of visible track relating to Parhead Forge and Beardmore's:



Behind it was the smashed remains of hundreds of drinks glasses, smashed vacuum cleaners, kettles, cappuccino makers, and the remains of boxes of electrical goods that had been emptied here. Pics were just a mess, but this chap seemed recognisable (maybe his sleigh had crashed here :



Further on, before the hair on the back of my neck screamed "Retreat", the road was filled with heaps of old tyres. The tracks on the grass head across open ground towards Parkhead, past a pristine and apparently unused red ash playing field:

[turbozutek]

Apollo,

I've been in dark abandoned asylums at midnight, in a police cell, watch someone die and even tested an old ECT machine on myself... But nothing, freaked me out as much as taking a walk around that area one night when my old Sierra broke down!!



It is very much as you say - totally 'hairs on the back of neck standing' strange.

Chris...

[duncan]

they should do something with all those tyres.

[Apollo]

Too true turbo. Your list, and similar wouldn't bother me either, their fear factor is based on legend/belief/training. As a kid, I'm told I drove the adults up the wall: they got their kids to behave by pointing up closes and telling them the bogeyman would get them up there. They were then speechless when I ran up the close to see what he was like!

Some places just seem to scream 'territory', even though there's nothing obvious. Maybe it's what missing compared to a 'friendly' area that makes the difference.

Hope there was some car left when you got back. Few of them around there, so one left on its own sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb, and gets treated accordingly.

Excellent Duncan, I'd forgot about that one

[Apollo]

One Steam Hammer I believe, recently installed and still to be painted properly. I almost walked past it!

[Apollo]

It may be a coincidence, but now that the tenements have been demolished, they have revealed the houses in the streets immediately behind them. As I was taking the picture of the hammer, I noticed that the majority of these were all sealed, with metal shutters over the windows, and a walk arounf the adjoining streets shows many more in a similar condition.

The smell of droppings may suggest this area is going to be cleared too, as there are new flats beign completed or started on former spare ground towards Parkhead Cross.

How about yet another set of 'Luxury' flats, dropped in beside the amenities of Tollcross Park?

[escotregen]

Give me strength - you try to give a bit of acknoweldgement to a worthy and optimistic endevour in the East End and look at the cynicism and snipping it evokes... ' ah yes, somewhere for the neds to drink'... 'smell of bullshit' etc. One poster even finds it possible to turn the whole thing on its head and read negativity into the fact that after 30 years this derelict spot is being attended to (classic Scotman's view on the glass being half-empty and not half-full)! If some folks don't know about the links with mining and this area - or about the long-term ongoing efforts to get these improvements underway, and yet feel free to make such carping noises about voluntary not-for-profit organisations (re comment: "suddenly this organisation "Kelvin Clyde Greenspace" found the will") - well, I for one don't intend wasting any time explaining the realities to them. It all rather flies in the face of a new member's recent comments about the 'lack of negativity' on HG. Yes, let's just go back to dark wee stories about getting feart when going through the neighbourhood.

[lordsleek]

Lets be honest Cap'n the best we can hope for is what they deign to give us.
They ripped entire communities apart and stuck them in soulless tower blocks or estates without so much as a pub. perhaps skeptical or not we should applaud any effort to restore a sense of community in the east end. Heres to the idea of being part of something.

[crusty_bint]

Excuse me, Luxury Flats, Parkhead at the Border with Shettleston? I dont think so somehow. I cant admit to knowing the background of this but the White Rose Housing Ass held responsibility over these newly revealed flats round Caroline St way, so I presume it will be them (in whatever form they take these days) doing the developing. The gushet area here has seen some improvements to its urban fabric in the past few years, with Housing Association, and some privayely, built housing filling in some glaring patches like the "bit a' sperr grunn" at Muiryfauld Dr, the site of the old Gospel Church etc.

I applaud Greenspace for creating this new public space and for involving the local community with it. Maybe this will put an end to the generations old tradition of gangs of neds hanging about that green box at the gable wall (the gable that was given a couple of mdf trees, coat of paint, and some lovely blue lights... and thats now a shrine to a local murder victim) I do wonder however... where they gonnae hav theyr bonfire noo?

Crusty

[Apollo]

Luxury Flats? It was a mildly homourous observation, but why not?

If the they can develop flats with an asking price in excess of £250,000 a stone's throw from the Barras and Pro central, and have them up for sale in the window of the estate agent's on Parkhead Cross, Why not?

People have all sorts of income routes, some generate lots of cash , and need a home.

Sweet Sixteen was on the telly a few weeks ago, complete with English subtitles.

[crusty_bint]

I know what yor saying Apollo, but there is no way, no chance, no how, not in a millennia will there be "luxury flats" built in this area. This area is traditionally the arse end of both Shettleston and Parkhead, this is where you go to get your drugs... or get stabbed. If you don't know how to spin twine, shoplift or shoot a gun, then you'll have no chance there. Luxury flats in Border... hahahahahahahahahahaha

my arse!

[Captain Brittles]

post removed

[paladin]

Been looking at this thread for a while and couldn't work out what (if anything) is wrong with 'proper regeneration in the East End' and it took me a while to suss out what was triggering the old antenna........it is "proper regeneration"! Can't say I can produce an example of proper regeneration anywhere that would satisfy all the relevant criteria and tick all the boxes because as far as I am concerned this regeneration project might throw up a development of mid-high priced units of housing but the community will not be regenerated as a result because this development will attract new people rather than existing residents.
In reality, a 'proper' regeneration of this area should have been put in place 25 year ago to sustain the people living there at the time.
I wish this project well, as what goes round comes round, in it's aim to regenerate the East End but I think the chance for 'proper' regeneration has been left a bit too late.