In this article I will (as promised) explore the feelings of the local community towards Westwood Cross Shopping Centre. I am going to try, to the best of my ability,to keep my feelings out of this story and present only an overview of general opinion. However I do have an opinion and I may therefore be a little biased - albeit unintentionally.

Westwood Cross is technically in Broadstairs and sits on the main route from Ramsgate to Margate. It boasts a number of features (shops) and it's own ghost. Psudoanonymouse satire blogger "EastCliffe Richard" calls it "Westwood Chaos" while Cllr Green tells us that Trevor Shonk will be the UKIP candidate citing Westwood Cross as a key issue.

Opinion is very much divided on the question of "is Westwood cross a good thing". The answer to this question appears to be entirely dependant on what effects of Westwood Cross you choose to look at...

Pro Westwood Cross

I had a hard time finding sufficient sources to even create this entry of positive opinion for the complex. However, inspection of a number of blog comments have yielded something. This suggests two possibilities (a) people that view Westwood cross as good are less vocal or less active online or (b) people that view Westwood cross as good are in a minority but vote in polls more often than other groups.

The most likely answer is that people that favour westwood cross are more likey to "shop" than "comment" creating the apparent disparity. This is further confirmed by the Council's own survey which I understood as having been taken at Westwood Cross (unsurprisingly) 90% of people rated it as either very or quite good. Overall this conclusion is not a wholly satisfying answer but until a more logic one is found it will have to do.

Unsurprisingly perhaps Eastcliff Ramsgate by Labour councillor David Green is firmly of the view that Westwood Cross is doing well.

Mrs Tara Plumbing comments on Eastcliff Richards blog post "Westwood Cross - Eyesore Of The Future?" (2008) that to her Westwood Cross "[...] is in the centre - it is easily accessible to most. And fit young things from anywhere on the Isle could even cycle there." However, she rarely goes to Westwood Cross (finding Ramsgate meets her needs better) but her husband (a plumber) [...] finds it most convenient - because it is on his route; parking; long bank hours.

Big News Margate reported a surge of interest (2007) in Westwood Cross but was unable to pin-point the reason. The discussion that sprung up was also interesting.

Westwood Cross Problems

Mrs Tara Plumbing comments (on the same ECR post mentioned earlier) that the biggest problem are the buses - both price and ease of use. A commenter calling himself only "Mr. C" replies that the loop plus a weekly ticket are actually most cost effective.

Anti Westwood Cross

Westwood Cross has more or less destroyed the traditional town centres and pinning your hopes on an art gallery is just pie in the sky.
(The Last Post, Danevalleyted in his departure post on closing his blog.)

There is a dispropotiniatly high count of expressed opinion that is very much against Westwood Cross. The prime reason for this appears to be that it is hurting the town centres in Margate and Ramsgate. I get the impression that if a series of concessions added sufficient value to the town centres to allow them to compete with Westwood Cross that most concerns would vanish.

There are other concerns and I will attempt to address these too.

Thanet Council Failed

birchington.blogspot.com (2006) has a short post which sparked off a strong debate. Anonymous (3:46 PM) accuses the council of greed and failing to encurage regeneration with the Westwood project.

"B of Birchington" echoes a common complaint about traffic levels and suggests that the council will only be happy when all farm land is concrete (some thing Anonymous (7:00 PM) strongly objected too). (See also Thanet's China Gateway for more of the same concern).

Anonymous (8:05 PM) observes that big business exists to take money from local people as efficiently as possible. Therefore the Council should, in his/her opinion, mediate the needs of the people and business. This commenter closes by saying Our TDC councillors have that responsibility and quite simply they have failed dismally in their duty by allowing a new town of Westwood to be created. I refuse to spend any money at or even go to Westwood.

The debate quickly breaks down from thereon in (as was common for that blog).

What can we do?

The Future of Thanet (2008) raises the question of the state of Thanet and what we can do. This quickly settled into a discussion of Westwood Cross.

Most of the local blogs or the newspaper articles I read point towards an area in steep decline but surely there is something we can do? On face value it appears that there is nothing we can do, but that is me being pessemistic, and just because the council are happy for the towns to die doesn’t mean that we should be.

Here the tone is more positive. Rather than the finger pointing and hard nosed attitude of the Thanet Life blog and it's commenters the article and much of the comments addresses positive action tat could be taken. The problem is also starkly framed:

Westwood Cross Shopping Centre, which sitting handily between Ramsgate, Margate, and Broadstairs has been taking people, and therefore their money away from the towns. Capitalism at it’s best. I’ve got nothing against being successful, but when it comes to the detriment of local small shops then shouldn’t we really be asking questions [...]

Eastcliff Richard is the first to reply suggesting a range of ideas and hopes that echo Adem's own thought of we should have a strategy, but at the moment there is nothing, and soon the town centre will die.

Else were they is some suggestion of the best answer being to leave the area and one with which I disagreed in person. This article being about everyone else's opinion I shall skip onwards.

Cars and Traffic

A point of contention that comes up time and again is that of people and their cars. "B of Birchington" mentions this on the Thanet Life blog while Cllr David Green said back in 2006 on an opposition councillors blog (Thanet Life) that KCC opposed the Westwood Cross project and "have failed to provide the infrastructure requried" [link].

Tony Flaig makes numerouse indirect references to the traffic conditions in most of the 17 posts he has made and tagged "Westwood Cross" - many of the posts carry images of long lines of stationary traffic.

Somehow the traffic situation is not mentioned in the Council Survey regarding the local opinion on Westwood Cross. The results feel to me (warning: opinion) like the results one would expect if one took a survey at the Westwood cross site. Doing a survey on site would create a natural distort in the data in favour of the site.

A related theme is the feelings of people regarding parking in and arround Westwood cross in comparison to town centres. The feeling largely seems to be that the council is being short sighted in charging for parking in Margate and Ramsgate when it can be obtained for free in the Westwood cross area. On eastcliffrichard.blogspot.com - Westwood Cross - Eyesore Of The Future? (2008) Anonymous (9:01 PM) mentions that Ramsgate is able to survive better because, even without parking concessions people just park in all of the side roads and walk down into the centre.

There is now some (limited) free parking in Margate only.

Westwood Drains Customers

The biggest theme of complaint is that there are a finite number of customers for shops and Westwood Cross is taking up too many to allow other shops any life.

On eastcliffrichard.blogspot.com - Westwood Cross - Eyesore Of The Future? (2008) Michael Child says that Westwood Cross [...] is damaging our towns and for this reason I try to avoid using it.

He goes on to expand on the issue (see full comment) and indicates with anecdotal evidence that the emptiness of the town centres is causing the ratio of everyday folk and "the bad element" to tip to the point that people are intimidated and stay away. The indication here is that a vicious cycle has been started.

In That's all Folks he addresses the closure of Dreamland Cinema which cited the opening of the multiplex at Westwood Cross.

It's not just the towns that have suffered according to Labour councillor David Green. Eurokent is the largely underused business park adjacent to Westwood Cross. (the emptiness can be seen on some of the photographs on the Big news Margate blog). Cllr Green worries that the business park will become a housing estate for lack of usage.

Zumiweb has some statistics that seem to back up this overall concern about utilisation of retail space with less than 9% free space in Westwood but between a quarter and a third of capacity free in Ramsgate and Margate.

Michael Child (a shop owner from Ramsgate) worries that the council are making things worse by selling off key leisure facilities to make the towns less attractive and directly benefits the out of town facilities at Westwood Cross.

In "Meanderings of a confused shopkeeper" Michael also talks about the fact that he feels the Council needs to adjust the rates charged to businesses in the town centres to enable shops there to compete more effectively with Westwood Cross.

Further Westwood Cross Reading

Big News Margate on Westwood Cross
Eastcliff Richard on Westwood Cross
FlickR discussion on Westwood Cross "public art"
Thanet Observer worries about animal cruelty at Westwood Cross

I would very much liked to have used many key images shown on blogs however I try use a strict sense of copyright and the absence of permission is seen as forbidding copying in my understanding of British law. as such I have not copied nor hot linked from other bloggers. There are a lot of links here and many lead to good commentary, images and other Westwood Cross related content. I urge images owners to consider posting some or all of their images under a creative commons license (flickr.com supports this and makes it very easy to do).