Steel Tower and the Northgate Arena

14/2/07

Is it just me that feels that our Northgate Arena is actually a very handsome building and that it would be a scandal if it were done away with merely to make room for yet another blasted hotel?

Coming round the ring road on a sunny evening, I frequently find the sight of the Arena quite breathtaking and would ask that the Chronicle's readers look afresh at it the next time they pass by.

Surely, also, it is our duty to preserve the finest examples of architecture from all eras of the past? Chester may be blessed with magnificent medieval, Georgian and Victorian buildings that are carefully protected for the benefit of future generations but what about those from the 1960s and 70s? There were some that called for the preservation of the Manweb Building on Sealand Road and also of the recently-demolished Cheshire Police HQ. I was not among them, at least as far as the latter goes, but feel strongly that the Arena remains simply the finest structure we currently possess from that period of major redevelopment in Chester's history and think that it would be an outrage if it were destroyed.

And what's wrong with it anyway that it should so casually be cast aside so that Steel Tower (surely not a name that promises architecture sympathetic to the aesthetics of a unique city such as ours!) can erect a mere hotel on its site?
Doubtlessly it would benefit from enlargement, but this is surely not a problem now that West Cheshire College has finally abandoned its ludicrous plan to squeeze their new campus onto its car park?

Who wants to have to get in their cars to flog out to the windswept wastelands of the Greyhound Park when excellent, nay, award-winning, leisure facilities already exist here, right in the city centre?

And what is it with this current orgy of hotel building anyway? What benefits will they bring to Chester? Jobs, you say. Doubtlessly true- for chambermaids, cleaners, bar staff and lift attendants from eastern Europe. Who will be staying in all these new hotels? - and who would want to when everything of value in Chester has been done away with to make room for them?

According to the local press, a variation upon this nutty plot seems to have re-surfaced in November 2007. Watch this space...