We paid an impromptu visit to Helensburgh last Thursday 17th July, to check out the work being done under the CHORD town centre and waterfront regeneration programme in advance of the start of the town’s first Summer Festival on Saturday 19th July – timed to offer fun family days out to the Glasgow Fair audiences.
Because the visit was a spontaneous one, we only had the emergency car camera to hand but we did what we could with that to show what a success has emerged from all the controversy and the [rightly] rejected earlier plans.
The works are not yet complete but they are well enough on already to have changed the feel and the public use of key spaces in the town, to have given it a new atmosphere which is welcoming and relaxing – and to point to what looks like the town’s best bet for a target visitor audience – a popular one. The Glasgow Fair period should be a good start to this direction and the town is ready to make an impact.
Colquhoun Square
The big hit is Colquhoun Square, where the earlier plan would have wrecked the geometry of the square and created a hard urban desert.
Today, it has been partly closed to traffic, with the main drag of Princes Street through its centre now running on a tiled surface and with traffic control – both of which remind drivers that they are not the masters of the universe in this area.
Grass has been retained, with a sufficiently effective weight in the layout to make a genuine impact and give a sense of ease.
The wide tiled paths – which keep the rectilinear geometry, slip around and between the areas of grass and flowers. The area now manages to be open, spacious – and intimate, at the same time. There is a perfect balance of enough privacy and enough of a sense of community in being there.
The area is generously – and judiciously – peopled with fully gorgeous benches – all curving metal frames and black end pieces with sinuous bleached timber seating between.
The proof of the success is immediately obvious – people were everywhere, relaxing on the seats, reading, chatting, taking in the sun and the general sense of tranquillity. It is already an owned space.
The tables and chairs of the coffee bars at points on the circumference add substantially to the character the square has now been given and brings to the town. When the landward half is completed later in the summer, there will be several more such pleasures available around it.
Some roller bladers came gliding through, part of but not dominating the scene – again a good balance. As they went, they flipped up and over a plinth waiting for some object to go on it, their skills adding to the fun of the square.
It’s not perfect. What is? Planners – and particularly public sector planners – seem to feel that variety is all. Here there are at least two different forms of tiling, each variegated; one monochromes and rectangular; and one, square formed, on a beige and coral theme. Both are laid offset.
This is all a bit messy and the two sets do not marry with any great harmony – but they’re less in your face than they appear in photographs and perhaps they will weather in a bit. The overall feel of the place gives them a secondary impact.
It would be good if public sector floral plantings incorporated some artistry as well as admirable horticultural health and vigour. At the moment, everywhere you look in Argyll, the full colour spectrum is banged in together. It is brightly noisy but there is plenty of room for a more nuanced and site specific approach – which would make the gardeners’ jobs more creative and more fun.
And yes, sadly, the unique and joyful ‘Comet’ street lamps have gone. They could have been retained to advantage if used in one specific area – but another weakness in corporate public sector design is conformity in all things.
There are also a lot of ‘things’ around the square – council planners like ‘things’ of all kinds for the barriers they offer to whatever the planners feel is essential. It’s the same anal drive as the need to put text and photographs in their own ruled boxes. But there you are.
However, the ‘things’ in Colquhoun Square – black marble-look cubes, can at least be sat upon and will come into their own on mass popular occasions – and their deployment makes some of them two-thirds-height, which will accommodate tired tinies.
The waterfront
The waterfront esplanade north of the Pier has been repaired after the pounding it took in the storms and surge tides earlier this year.
It supports a path above the shingle beach and below a smartened up grass area between the beach and the pavement on to West Clyde Street. The path was being given a good hose and brush, ready for the festival.
A Fun Fair was being set up on the Pier itself – the right place for it – in the town centre, on the water, beside the Sports Centre and the skateboard ramps – which a couple of girls had found a different use for on a sunny day.
It may be utilitarian but any visitor to anywhere knows how important good, well kept and clean public lavatories are – and the facilities on the Pier now offer immediate reassurance that there is no need for a recoil.
A place to be proud of
As we looked around we chanced upon Helensburgh Councillor Gary Mulvaney, taking the Scottish Conservative’s candidate for the Argyll and Bute seat in the 2015 General Election, Alastair Redman from Islay, on a guided tour of the project.
Councillor Mulvaney was relaxed about the roller bladers, admiring of their skills and encouragingly comfortable with the prospect of peaceful coexistence.
This final version of the Helensburgh CHORD project has given the town a heart that beats, a place people demonstrably want to be and are using naturally, a place the town’s commercial life can respond to and feed off.
It is the most hopeful development possible in Helensburgh. It lifts the spirits for every possible reason.
Our congratulations to all concerned, architects, planners, councillors, management and contractors.
Coffee central calls.