First look at nine-storey apartment block proposed for Hull Marina Huge housing plan to transform historic railway station site please log in to view this image https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/new...UUEVavRMYiLigLP5uAf_KsABmEy8_PeoCmcZYEfhMOL7Q
Ferensway high-rise green light set to bring wow factor to Hull Company has been given two-year planning approval Plans for a new £30m multi-storey development in Hull city centre have been approved by councillors. The scheme earmarked for a site bordered by Ferensway, Spencer Street and Prospect Street includes 249 residential units and six ground floor commercial units. The residential space includes a mix of one, two and three-bed apartments and one and two-bed duplex units in four high-rise tower blocks. The highest will be 14 storeys. Read more: Audi wedged into Hull garden after dramatic crash as youths 'walk off' There will also be 17 new town houses included in the development and an internal courtyard garden area and gym for residents. A total of 50 car parking spaces will be provided within the scheme's central courtyard area with an entrance off North Street and an exit to Spencer Street. There will also be two cycle storage areas. To sign up for the Hull Live newsletter, click here The site currently includes the former Circus Circus nightclub in Spencer Street, the Shirethorn House office complex in Prospect Street and open land fronting Ferensway which was once occupied by a row of shops. please log in to view this image Circus Circus in Spencer Street (Image: Hull Live) Both the former nightclub and Shirethorn House will be demolished to clear the site for re-development. Feather Foot Holdings, the company behind the scheme, was given conditional planning permisson by Hull City Council's planning committee this afternoon. The go-ahead comnes with a condition that work must start on the site within two years.
Tracey Thorn - When I first saw my face on the side of a building, I couldn’t quite believe it was real In the past couple of weeks my face has appeared on the outside wall of a building in Hull. I don’t mean like an image of the Virgin Mary in a small Italian hill town, visible only to true believers. I mean that I’ve been painted there, as part of a mural. The first I knew of it was when someone tweeted me a photograph showing the side of a red-brick building on Clumber Street. Three ladders were propped up against it, and a man in paint-spattered dungarees was hard at work. Looming above him were the huge faces of Roland Gift, Mick Ronson and, well, me. I couldn’t quite believe it was real, and I asked the original tweeter that very question. Although why anyone would bother to fake a mural of me and some rock stars in a northern town was another question altogether. The replies flooded in, confirming that it was all true, and linking to a recent article in the Hull Daily Mail which had the full story. The mural is the work of a retired art teacher, Ed Ullyart, and is a celebration of Hull’s musical history. Also included are the Red Guitars, an indie band from the Eighties, and the folk group the Watersons. More faces are due to appear, so I imagine it won’t be long before we see the Housemartins. I feel slightly guilty, as all these people are Hull born and bred, while I was a mere student there. For a year I lived a ten minute walk away from Clumber Street, in Pearson Park, and then for another year I lived even nearer, in Salisbury Street. I can’t imagine what I would have thought if you’d told me that one day, decades in the future, my face would decorate the streets I walked round. Anyway, it is an honour, and instead of feeling guilty, I will work on just feeling flattered. The artist has done a grand job so far, using a range of brown and terracotta tones, so that the faces seem to emerge from the brickwork like natural forms, rather than being imposed. Gift looks, of course, very beautiful, Ronson looks enigmatic, and I look OK, all things considered. I’ve been painted from a photograph, which looks like it was taken in around 1983. My hair is short and dark and spiky on top, and I’m wearing a long dangly diamanté earring, which I think I only wore that year. I look a bit pensive, a bit heavy-eyed. The expression on my face is one I often see on the face of my 20-year-old son. There was much speculation on Twitter as to the identity of the man in the corner of the mural, who turns out to be Paul Jackson, the owner of the New Adelphi Club. Opened at the end of 1984 (which, as Philip Larkin nearly said, was rather late for me), the club occupies an old terraced house, with a bomb site for a car park. Still, Oasis, Pulp and Radiohead all played there, thus earning its owner a well-deserved place on the wall of fame. It’s all very Hull, this mixture of fame and its opposite. All these people, it seems to say, have done very well and we are proud of them, and if you haven’t heard of some of them, well, that’s your bloody fault. Hull’s music scene has never quite had the glamour or status of other northern cities such as Liverpool or Manchester, but perhaps because of that it has, especially in recent years, worked hard to promote its history and contribution to culture. But always with that typical refusal to glamourise, that insistence on the inclusion of the ordinary and the down to earth. Hull is very big on the notion of not getting above yourself. So I am delighted to read in the article that, alongside the beautiful rock stars, the artist will be including “an image of popular Hull lollipop man Phil Boreham, who died in January after spending several years patrolling a nearby pedestrian crossing on Princes Avenue with his dog Snowy and a handmade ‘Thank You’ sign he showed to patient drivers”. Ullyart goes on to say that, “He was a lovely chap, so it’s the least I can do.” I’m even more honoured now, to be in such company.
It's a grim picture out there in retail-land at the moment, new figures show 20% of all retail units in shopping centres are now vacant, 15% of all high street retail units are currently vacant, along with 11.5% of all retail park units and all are continuing to increase.
Yet in retail land, sales are up, so maybe not altogether grim. Retail sales volumes declined by 1.4% between April and May 2021 following a sharp increase in April when retail restrictions were eased; despite the monthly decline, over April and May combined, average total retail sales volumes were still 7.7% higher than in March 2021, and were 9.1% higher than in February 2020 before the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The largest contribution to the monthly decline in May 2021 came from food stores where sales volumes fell by 5.7%; anecdotal evidence suggests the easing of hospitality restrictions had had an impact on sales as people returned to eating and drinking at locations such as restaurants and bars. Non-food stores reported a 2.3% increase in monthly sales volumes in May 2021 with household goods stores (for example, hardware and furniture stores) and “other” non-food stores reporting the largest growth of 9.0% and 7.7% respectively. The large increase in sales volumes in April, followed by a relatively small fall in May, has resulted in the volume of sales for the three months to May 2021 being 8.3% higher than in the previous three months; there was strong growth in automotive fuel sales and non-food retailers of 19.3% and 17.8% respectively. The proportion of retail sales conducted online remains substantially higher than before the pandemic, but in May all retail sectors, with the exception of food stores, reported a fall in their proportions of online sales as consumers returned to physical stores; the total proportion of sales online decreased to 28.5% in May 2021, down from 29.8% in April 2021. https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/retailindustry/bulletins/retailsales/may2021
Read somewhere recently a council was buying up a redundant shopping centre and converting it into open green space. Good move imo.
How does a wow factor rate compared to iconic? Does it have to haveca wow factor for a period before becoming iconic?
I visit Leeds pretty regularly. Pre Covid when walking down Briggate past HN you'd go three steps forward, then two sideward. You could send an Exocet down there now and it would miss everyone...Pre Covid you couldn't get a unit other than in the new developments I counted 23 the other day in around the Briggate area...