By Thom Kennedy

Last updated at 09:55, Monday, 14 December 2009

So much has happened in the last 12 years, yet Penrith has been stuck in the same rut since the News Squares scheme first launched.

Keith Phillips

A lot happened in 1998. Remember Kate Winslet’s tearful Oscar acceptance speech for Titanic?

Remember David Beckham’s red card against Argentina for petulantly kicking out at Diego Simeone? Remember the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky inquiry?

People in Penrith talk about that year a lot. It was the year when plans for a new town centre development were first discussed, bringing hope that the town’s retail sector could be set to burst into life.

Now enough time has passed for all those notorious incidents to pass into nostalgia, but Penrith has barely moved. The town has a gaping hole at its centre, and the scheme now known as the New Squares is now at a creaking, groaning standstill.

This week the troubled project was engulfed in fog once again as councillors rejected a proposal from Sainsbury’s to complete the planned scheme in exchange for the right to build a 78,000 or 90,000 square foot supermarket as part of it.

While the decision answers the question of whether the massive Sainsbury’s store – even the 78,000 sq ft shop would be bigger than Carlisle’s Rosehill Tesco – will be built in the town, it leaves open the matter of what will be built instead.

Currently, what was to be a shining example of Penrith’s rejuvenation is little more than a muddy hole seen through a series of snatched glimpses through a security fence.

Only after a four-month ‘step-in’ period during which either National Australia Bank – who withdrew funding in October 2008 and caused work to stop – or Sainsbury’s could agree to build the original scheme, with a 55,000 sq ft supermarket, can the future shape of the scheme begin to emerge.

Eden Council leader Keith Phillips said: “Until the step-in period is sorted we have got to wait, but we are looking at a way forward while we are waiting.

“We have to build something that is going to bring funding back in, we have got to be careful. People shouldn’t build their hopes up that they are going to get something super-fantastic, as it has got to be down to earth and viable. That’s the biggest thing these days.”

Chances are, most people in Penrith had stopped building their hopes up some time ago.

In 1998 the possibility of a town centre redevelopment was first proposed, and in 2000 Preston-based Booths supermarket agreed to anchor the newly created Maple Grove scheme. By late 2001, the scheme was already over-subscribed as shops rushed to get involved with the development.

But in January 2002, Penrith-based Lowther Manelli Properties – initially overlooked for the scheme – joined with Tesco to put forward a new bid. Their larger development would, bosses claimed, bring £11 million of lost trade back to Penrith and produce £3.5 million worth of spin-off trade for existing town centre businesses.

In March 2003 councillors gave the green light to Lowther Manelli to develop the 23 acre Southend Road site under the name Beacon Place.

Mr Phillips attempts to quell spiralling hopes of a bright future for Southend Road may have been best used in October 2005, when precise details of the £77million scheme were unveiled.

Featuring a giant new supermarket, 34 new shops, restaurants and bars, and 234 flats and houses, the new scheme could, developers promised with flashing eyes, bring 900 jobs to Eden.

But with the rise came the fall. Work began in June last year, but less than three months later it had ground to a shuddering halt as the bank withdrew funding.

And a year down the line from work stopping, it seems no closer to restarting. Penrith FC has been moved to Frenchfield, sucking the last functioning amenity from the Southend Road site, but overall the development remains static.

A year of negotiations has been punctuated by drama after crisis – the arrest and subsequent resignation of the council’s former leader Colin Nineham, the council facing a financial black hole and Lowther Manelli going into liquidation being of particular note.

A public consultation into Sainsbury’s proposals held earlier this year provides the most telling impact of the scheme’s recent history. A little market town which takes a fierce pride in its independent retailers has been divided down the middle by plans to bring in extra shoppers for those traders.

Instead of a shiny new town centre, the New Squares scheme’s only legacy up to now is to leave Penrith divided and angry.

Some councillors appear almost apologetic at the turn of events that has brought the scheme to this point.

Speaking at the full council meeting to decide on Sainsbury’s offer, held at the North Lakes Hotel on Tuesday night, councillor Gordon Nicolson said: “I know I have contributed to the current position. I accepted recommendations when I should have been asking awkward questions.

“We now have to look to our executive and group leaders, as it is they who are charged with providing leadership and direction and coming up with a solution. It isn’t going to be an easy ride.”

Mr Phillips, speaking afterwards, added: “I came into the council because of the New Squares. I think the public have got to realise what the council has gone through over the years, and we would have liked to have seen a different outcome.

“The council has done the right things at the right times, such as bringing forward the possibility of a challenge and advising members.”

What’s gone is gone, but what will eventually end up in Southend Road is as vague as ever. Nonetheless there are plenty of different opinions about what should be built there.

Derek Hurton has been at the head of a protest group hoping to prevent the supermarket scheme going ahead. Speaking after Tuesday’s meeting he said: “The important thing now is that we put what has happened behind us and look forward and come up with a way to develop the site and to enhance rather than detract from Penrith.

“The immediate priority to get some car parking back, even if it is temporary, until the future of the site is decided. I don’t see why that can’t be done, and it would solve some immediate problems.

“You could use the site for a mixture of retail, car parking and affordable housing, a lot like the original plan. We know the economy has changed, the retail environment has changed since the original plan, and that’s what’s caused it to come to a standstill, but I don’t think big retail schemes are the answer, even if they ever were.”

A small retail, car parking and housing scheme does seem to fit with Keith Phillips’ hopes for a viable, down-to-earth plan that brings in enough money to be self financing.

Whether it is likely is another matter. Supermarkets still look the most likely option to find the necessary finance to complete a scheme in Penrith. How the finished scheme will look is a mystery to everyone. It’s been that way since 1998.

First published at 11:23, Thursday, 10 December 2009
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk