Penryn Pedestrianisation Debate

IMAGINING PENRYN

Patricia Finney
07704 173745 patriciafinney@btinternet.com

This is an outline of how and why I believe pedestrianising Market Street would help make Penryn more prosperous, along with my reasons for writing it.

I'm embarassed to have to admit that I'd lived in Cornwall for ten years before I bothered to visit Market Street, Penryn. There's no excuse: I'd lived in Devoran and Carnon Downs and I'd driven to Falmouth plenty of times via Commercial Road. I thought that was Penryn – I just assumed all the people who assured me that Penryn was lovely were talking nonsense (arrogant? Moi?)

So when I saw Market Street and the Town Hall for the first time – on a cold wet day when it was pretty much empty of people – I was gobsmacked. The hair on the back of my neck actually stood up. This was an 18th/19th century High Street, still standing in the 21st century. It was pretty, clean and had clearly been carefully and sensitively renovated. So why was it empty?

When I came back from living in Spain for a couple of years, I decided to see what I could do to liven the place up. I can't say my writer's retreat and coffee shop was a blinding success – it seems I'm better at baking and eating cakes than selling them. – but while I owned it I got involved with the Port of Penryn Chamber of Commerce in the hope of finding out why the centre of Penryn was not crowded with people. To me it seemed very strange: as an incomer, I knew how unusual and precious it is to have an intact High Street; through the Chamber I met some of the people who had worked so hard with Penryn Vision and the Town Council to refurbish the place. I tried making suggestions. The chief problem, of course, is apathy. Everywhere you go people are too busy watching the X-factor and surfing the Internet to be bothered to do something about where they live.

I remember discussing with one very busy Penryn lady who has done a great deal for the town, how I often had visiting elderly ladies asking shyly to use my café toilet. They didn't realise there was a very civilized clean public toilet just behind Costcutters. Why didn't they know this? Because there were no signposts whatever to tell them. When I asked the lady why not, she said cosily, "Oh everybody knows where that is…"
Everybody who was born in Penryn perhaps.

This conversation has become my favourite example of the unfortunate closed-mindedness of Penryn. The town has suffered badly over the years and it seems to have turned in on itself.

This may sound harsh but it is a simple commercial and economic fact that with a population of around 5000 people, many of them unemployed, Penryn and Market Street cannot become truly prosperous just by serving the people who live here. It never has. In the 19th century Penryn was a bustling port exporting hides, granite, tin and all sorts of goods all over the world. There have been other things destructive to Market Street. Many 'Rynners have told me how the decline of the centre really started when the school moved out – there was no longer a daily reason for women to go shopping there. Instead they went to Asda and their money, instead of moving around the Penryn economy, now goes straight into the coffers of the giant US conglomerate, Wal-Mart.

And now they can choose between Lidl and Sainsbury as well. I'm not one of those that wastes time railing against supermarkets and hankering after the old-fashioned high street with the butcher, the baker and the grocer all in their separate shops. I'm probably the last generation that has actually experienced proper Saturday morning high street shopping. It was hell: with the traditional overladen pushchair, screaming baby, screaming toddler dragging along, in the rain, having to queue at each individual shop or stall on a very limited budget. At least in a supermarket you only queue once and you're not being soaked or jostled into the traffic.

Supermarkets are here to stay and there's no point whining about it. The school has gone to a palatial new building and that's an improvement too.

But now the heart of Penryn has to reinvent itself, against the centrifugal force of the supermarkets ringing it and the depressive effect of idiotic bankers, recession and wholesale Government cuts. If it refuses to reinvent itself, I believe that Market Street will be fully residential in a few years, apart, perhaps, from a couple of pubs, a chippy and maybe a convenience shop hanging on by its teeth. This has happened to small high streets all over England and it can happen in Cornwall.

It doesn't have to happen in Penryn. Reinvention can be done, given the will: I've seen a miserable depressed street in Whitby (Church Street) utterly transform itself and become a magnet for shoppers and tourists. Penryn can do that too – and probably better.

How?

The key is attracting people and their money from outside, from beyond Tremough and Mabe, beyond Truro and Falmouth. There's a good base to build on: the students at Tremough Campus could be drawn into the centre and away from Falmouth. Tourism might seem like a nuisance when the emmets clog the summer roads, but they bring vital money into a county where commerce and employment have struggled since the 70s.

So how could Market Street pull people in? I spent ages racking my brains trying to think what you could put in Market Street that would attract tourists, increase footfall and so encourage commerce there.
Finally (duh!) I worked it out. What's in the centre of Penryn to attract people… is Market Street itself! People love visiting places that have stayed true to their past. Get rid of the cars and lorries roaring through, and you could be a hundred years back in the Edwardian era.

After the Market Street shopkeepers told me off in the West Briton for something I hadn't said, I popped into Penryn on a Saturday morning to do a quick informal survey.

Here are the results:

Saturday 2nd Oct 2010 11.30 am to 12.00pm.
Shop fronts: 54
Of those, unoccupied: 16
This is better than it was but not ideal. I've heard that there used to be over a hundred businesses in
Market Street only a few decades ago.
Buses: 6
Cars: 199
People on foot: 131

Now this is a very rough survey done by one woman with a notebook on one Saturday morning. It should be done again properly. But one thing is blindingly obvious from it: there were more cars than people on the one morning of the week when you would expect to see the most pedestrians.

In other words, most of the cars are passing through and therefore the people in them are not spending money in Market Street. It may seem busy, but actually it's not.

While I was watching I saw two cars double-parked outside the post office and two more outside Costcutters. They stayed there. I saw one parking space being used by two cars in succession. As far as I could see the other cars didn't move at all.

As most shopkeepers realise, people on foot are likely to spend money. People locked in their cars heading for Asda, aren't. This is why you count footfall not tyresqueal when you're assessing the moneymaking potential of a site. In fact, cars are a real handicap: a place that's full of hurtling lumps of metal emitting noxious gases simply isn't a relaxing place to walk around. There were about 58 more cars than people on foot. So the kind of people who might like to come and admire the 17th and 18th century buildings, visit the museum and perhaps do a spot of shopping as they do in their thousands in Church Street Whitby… won't come. They won't even think of it.

It wouldn't matter so much if the lumps of metal were able to stop and let people out to spend money But they're not. Thanks to Cornwall Council's crackdown on parking, they daren't – leaping out to raid the cashpoint, post a letter or grab some chips is all most drivers feel they have time for. And a great many of the parking places, including the Permarin Road free shoppers' carpark are taken up by residents' parking and by yacht-owners leaving their cars while they go off for a week's sailing.

And so I believe that in order to reinvent itself as a pleasant characterful place to visit and spend money in, Market Street must free itself from the constant sterile invasion of smelly metal.

It needs to pedestrianise. This should be done in an intelligent, measured and above all commercially-minded way so as not to kill off the businesses which the scheme should ultimately benefit.
These are my suggestions for how it might be done.

Rising bollards just below the junction of Helston Road and West Street (due to be strengthened in early 2011 anyway). These would only be up between 9.00 am and 6.00 pm every day, allowing deliveries at other times and takeaway businesses like the fish and chip shops, Chinese and curry house to carry on as before.
Buses, local taxis, disabled transport and bikes would be able to go up and down Market Street as before.
Saracen Way to be made two-way with entrance from the Helston Road to allow access to the doctor's surgery and carpark.
The entrance to Saracen Way between the Methodist Church and the Council Offices would be closed off. Saracen carpark would become residents' and disabled parking only. The pavement could then be altered to make easier access for the disabled and elderly going up to the high pavement leading to the Post Office and the Seven Stars pub.
A small roundabout allowing cars coming down West Street to escape up the Helston Road. The bollard would be below this.
The lower moving bollard would be at Fish Cross, positioned so that St Thomas Street and New Street could still be used, probably one-way.
The old car auction site next to the station (which is apparently no longer to be used for an overcrowded and ill-thought out student flats development) could easily be turned into a short-stay carpark with some long-stay resident parking. This is because Permarin carpark cannot be changed to paid-for parking; I've lost count of the number of people who've told me that this should be done. It was investigated carefully and I'm afraid the terms of the lease mean it must remain free.

While we're at it, we could have some clear finger-posts in Market Street pointing to the Museum, the Station, Jubilee Wharf, Permarin Road carpark and (of course) the public toilets. We also need fingerposts on Station Road pointing the way for pedestrians from the station down the Helston Road to the Town Clock, up towards Tremough campus and towards Penryn College and Asda. At the moment the only (small, bent, dirty) signpost points visitors down slippery steep uneven steps and a path which deposits them on West Street with no clue as to which way is Market Street. Despite what the lady said, NOT everybody knows where 'that' is. I didn't when I first came here. Tourists don't. Students don't. We should shout about Market Street because it's something to be proud of. The walk down Helston Road to the Town Clock gives you a breathtaking view. West Street is longer and doesn't, so why direct people that way?

There should also be a rates holiday for all shops on Market Street while the changes are going on so as to try and ease the transition and the work must be done as quickly as possible.

After the pedestrianisation is complete, comes the next phase. It's no good just pedestrianising and then leaving it. For the first time since the arrival of the internal combusion engine, Penryn will have a central public space. Something should happen there every day. For instance (and these are just rough ideas) Tuesday – music performance; Wednesday – street theatre; Thursday – art market; Friday – local farmer's market; Saturday – children's market and entertainments.

I said some harsh things about Market Street in the West Briton which were then misinterpreted as being about the whole of Penryn. I was delighted to find that people were interested enough to argue with me and get themselves into the West Briton as well. I wasn't aiming to put down Penryn; what I wanted was to point out something that I could see but nobody else seemed to care about. I'm very happy to find that I was wrong to think that nobody cared.

I've spent time and effort to try and make a suggestion which I believe will lead to a renaissance in Penryn's central street. I want it to be full of life and bustle, all the shops open for business, tour ships queuing up to bring in tourists during the summer, students enjoying themselves much closer to Tremough than Falmouth (so they won't have to drive home afterwards!) The influx of tourist pounds will bring jobs and business to the town – especially if the planning authorities are careful not to allow chains such as Starbucks which would ruin the ambience. Penryn could become the sort of place people come to Cornwall to enjoy because they can't find it elsewhere.

Or Penryn can dwindle, struggling all the way, until it's just another suburb of Falmouth with some industrial estates.

As current Chairman of the Penryn Chamber of Commerce, I have no power (so no need to be disgusted, dear Mr Miller who bothered to write and tell me off but couldn't be bothered to include his full address in case I answered!) My remit and the remit of the Chamber of Commerce is to support, promote and protect all businesses in Penryn. All I can do is make what I hope and believe is a useful suggestion. This is not an approved diktat from the Chamber; this is my own personal opinion, although I have had some feedback from other members who agree with me.

If you've read this far and would like to argue about it or even agree with it, please contact the Chamber. If you're a member, please come to the meeting on Wednesday 20th October at 7.00pm in the council chamber. Any of those who took the trouble to be photographed for the West Briton can come to the Chamber meeting as my personal guests – some of them are members already although I haven't had the chance to discuss my ideas with them recently.

I'm not a 'Rynner. I'm an incomer – but sometimes when you grow up in a place, you get used to it and forget how special and beautiful it is. I believe that Penryn can once again be a bustling prosperous town and I believe that pedestrianising Market Street is the way to achieve that. If you've got a better idea (and not just another whinge about parking), please tell me about it.

Patricia Finney
patriciafinney@btinternet.com