Is the City of Leicester a dump?

[Miquel The Work Geordie]

2 hours ago, pkonline said:

Just compare Leicester centre to Nottingham and Derby, hands down much better. Restaurants and bars - with character, independence - Nottingham in particular has seen a massive drop because it has usually relied on it's large student populus for the bars and clubs, which, because of changes in how young people socialise, are going out of business.

 

I couldn't disagree more with this and can't believe anyone would think it. Both Nottingham and Derby slaughter Leicester for pubs and bars with semblances of character, it isn't a contest. Nottingham is demonstrably better in that regard but Derby probably has the best 'good pub : city size' ratio in the UK.

[SpacedX]

2 hours ago, pkonline said:

Having grown up in Leicester in the 80s and 90s and comparing it today, it's much better. Take for example shops - back then, many people used to shop in Nottingham - now, and I live in Nottingham, the shops are much better in Leicester and Highcross beats the Nottingham centres.

A bit bewildered by this post to be honest. Aside from the monoculture of the big branches, retail consists of vape shops, mobile phone outlets, pound shops and tawdry tacky highstreets. High rents and Ecommerce has crucified the independent traders which thrived in the 70s, 80s and 90s and made the City centre an interesting place to visit. There is still a semblance of this in Nottingham if you venture beyond the mainstream chains. 

[Dr The Singh]

2 hours ago, SpacedX said:

A bit bewildered by this post to be honest. Aside from the monoculture of the big branches, retail consists of vape shops, mobile phone outlets, pound shops and tawdry tacky highstreets. High rents and Ecommerce has crucified the independent traders which thrived in the 70s, 80s and 90s and made the City centre an interesting place to visit. There is still a semblance of this in Nottingham if you venture beyond the mainstream chains. 

Naa chap, Notts is very diverse, lots of bars and pubs, restaurants of culture.  The castle and history drives tourism and stag, hen does with classy places for the elite of society.

 

Leicester needs a leader that can use our heritage and drive it forward.  I recommend Keith Vaz, we could be the capitol of gay sex and adultery.

[SpacedX]

1 hour ago, Dr The Singh said:

Naa chap, Notts is very diverse, lots of bars and pubs, restaurants of culture. 

I suggest that you read my post again. 

[Wymsey]

What an absolute waste the area is, the ghost town neighbourhood where the houses are boarded up next to the General Hospital.

 

There must be a hundreds of them.

[Izzy]

Stumbled on this watching YT earlier. The Cov version is even worse tbf

 

 

[kenny]

2 hours ago, Wymsey said:

What an absolute waste the area is, the ghost town neighbourhood where the houses are boarded up next to the General Hospital.

 

There must be a hundreds of them.

They are being renovated for social housing. I'm not sure on what timescale they are getting completed.

[MattFox]

6 hours ago, Miquel The Work Geordie said:

 

I couldn't disagree more with this and can't believe anyone would think it. Both Nottingham and Derby slaughter Leicester for pubs and bars with semblances of character, it isn't a contest. Nottingham is demonstrably better in that regard but Derby probably has the best 'good pub : city size' ratio in the UK.

Derby is good for pubs but that’s about it

 

The Westfield/Intu/whatever it’s called now has decimated the rest of the city centre

[MattFox]

41 minutes ago, Izzy said:

Stumbled on this watching YT earlier. The Cov version is even worse tbf

 

 

Much bigger Gun/Gang problem in Cov too

 

Place is an absolute dump with the uni’s basically propping the whole city up 

[SpacedX]

7 hours ago, MattFox said:

Much bigger Gun/Gang problem in Cov too

 

Place is an absolute dump with the uni’s basically propping the whole city up 

Actually, that's not true. Coventry University is in survival mode due to a range of factors, predominately the curtailment of international student visas. Restrictions on some student visas, political rhetoric and the media have been attributed to a 40% year-on-year drop in international student recruitment at English universities in January’s intake. And the government is now examining the possibility of restricting or closing the Graduate Route visa, which allows highly educated Post-Graduate students to work in the UK for a limited time after they have completed their studies. Universities UK and VCs are pointing to new data that shows every student on the Graduate Route visa brings a net benefit of £1,240 each to the UK economy.

 

Coventry University Group will weather this since it can realign and it has substantial investments, cash reserves and equity to allow time to do this - but it currently has a 100m deficit. International students are worth more than £150 million to the city but government policy changes are driving them away and this is hammering businesses and the local economy of the city.

 

They are having to accelerate a shift to teaching students outside of England – and they are already achieving this with branch and badged campuses in Egypt, Morocco and China, with negotiations underway for more in Kazakhstan and India and several other countries. However, those campuses won’t benefit the Coventry economy. 

 

University of Warwick being a Russel Group member and a research lead institution as opposed to a teaching/modern has a very high research revenue and a higher budget but it doesn't have the same level of wealth in property/land investments nor the student population of CU. 

 

CU is the City Centre campus and it is through this that many local businesses depend.

Edited 20 May by SpacedX

[Lako42]

Went to Notts yesterday and do not get the hype. 

 

The streets were filthy, loads of absolute weapons about and quite a lot of towny pubs full of chavs. 

 

Was mainly down near rough trade records area but just wasn't blown away tbh. 

 

 

The Brewdog is absolutely shit, even the Leicester one was miles better. 

 

 

Was expecting a lot after comments as I never go there. 

 

 

Prefer the lanes and surrounding areas and the New Walk up to the park and Queens tbh. 

Edited 20 May by Lako42

[RonnieTodger]

12 hours ago, Izzy said:

Stumbled on this watching YT earlier. The Cov version is even worse tbf

 

 

Thought we were getting an Eastenders reboot 

 

[Free Falling Foxes]

1 hour ago, RonnieTodger said:

Thought we were getting an Eastenders reboot 

 

That's not Braunstone. This aerial pic is, however, of one of the less attractive part of the city.

 

[RoboFox]

52 minutes ago, Free Falling Foxes said:

That's not Braunstone. This aerial pic is, however, of one of the less attractive part of the city.

 

Some sections of the northern part of the City centre are post-apocalyptic. 

 

Abbey Street, Belgrave gate and pretty much the entire wasteland between the flyover and Abbey park need investment badly. 

 

[pkonline]

22 hours ago, SpacedX said:

A bit bewildered by this post to be honest. Aside from the monoculture of the big branches, retail consists of vape shops, mobile phone outlets, pound shops and tawdry tacky highstreets. High rents and Ecommerce has crucified the independent traders which thrived in the 70s, 80s and 90s and made the City centre an interesting place to visit. There is still a semblance of this in Nottingham if you venture beyond the mainstream chains. 

Where in Nottingham? (I live in Nottingham)

[pkonline]

4 hours ago, Lako42 said:

Went to Notts yesterday and do not get the hype. 

 

The streets were filthy, loads of absolute weapons about and quite a lot of towny pubs full of chavs. 

 

Was mainly down near rough trade records area but just wasn't blown away tbh. 

 

 

The Brewdog is absolutely shit, even the Leicester one was miles better. 

 

 

Was expecting a lot after comments as I never go there. 

 

 

Prefer the lanes and surrounding areas and the New Walk up to the park and Queens tbh. 

Fully agree. I live in Notts (well, Beeston) and have been into Nottingham Centre about 5 times in the past 12m. I've been out in Leicester a lot more.

 

[SpacedX]

6 minutes ago, pkonline said:

Where in Nottingham? (I live in Nottingham)

Dotted all over the city. Some out of the centre such as Forest Hills, others nestled in between the chains. A good example of the sort of businesses that I am referring to is Hopkinson, near the station. I suspect that places like this simply aren't on your radar. I don't mean that in a derogatory way but it would explain why you think that the Leicester City Centre of today is "much better" than the 80s and 90s in which independent business and traders thrived. 

[ithuriel]

2 hours ago, RoboFox said:

Some sections of the northern part of the City centre are post-apocalyptic. 

 

Abbey Street, Belgrave gate and pretty much the entire wasteland between the flyover and Abbey park need investment badly. 

 

I thought they had been invested in, badly 

[Parafox]

4 hours ago, RoboFox said:

Some sections of the northern part of the City centre are post-apocalyptic. 

 

Abbey Street, Belgrave gate and pretty much the entire wasteland between the flyover and Abbey park need investment badly. 

 

 

Between the traffic island at Abbey Park Road/Melton Road towards Vaughn Way has had significant investment to remove the old flyover and regenerate the approach to the so-called "Golden Mile". It did improve it mainly by scrapping the ugly concrete flyover and the fountains underneath it, which never worked.

 

Still looks unattractive though.

[Miquel The Work Geordie]

9 hours ago, Lako42 said:

Went to Notts yesterday and do not get the hype. 

 

The streets were filthy, loads of absolute weapons about and quite a lot of towny pubs full of chavs. 

 

Was mainly down near rough trade records area but just wasn't blown away tbh. 

 

 

The Brewdog is absolutely shit, even the Leicester one was miles better. 

 

 

Was expecting a lot after comments as I never go there. 

 

 

Prefer the lanes and surrounding areas and the New Walk up to the park and Queens tbh. 

 

You can't moan about Nottingham's pubs lacking character when you seemingly chose to go to the Brewdog and ignore the stacks of good ones? Lol 

 

Sneinton, Canning Circus, even the handful near the station which have no right being as good as they are offer way more than Leicester's what — half a dozen pubs with character? I don't enjoy bashing the place but it's pub scene is objectively sub par. 

[Lako42]

2 hours ago, Miquel The Work Geordie said:

 

You can't moan about Nottingham's pubs lacking character when you seemingly chose to go to the Brewdog and ignore the stacks of good ones? Lol 

 

Sneinton, Canning Circus, even the handful near the station which have no right being as good as they are offer way more than Leicester's what — half a dozen pubs with character? I don't enjoy bashing the place but it's pub scene is objectively sub par. 

I wasn't focusing on purely pubs. 

 

I get what brewdog is, we went on another place up the street which was a brewery pub and it wasn't anything special either. 

 

Just wasn't impressed with the place on a general level. 

 

 

[Scanchez]

UK's Best City Breaks Revealed:

https://uk.yahoo.com/finance/news/uk-best-city-break-liverpool-london-cardiff-050057449.html

'At the opposite end of the tables, Derby (56%), Leicester (58%) and Swansea (58%) were the lowest rated large cities'. 

I imagine a lot of those who voted didn't even step foot inside Alfred Lenton. Idiots.
 

[davieG]

https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/leicester-news/leicester-market-might-never-return-9299703

 

Leicester Market might never return to historic home as regeneration plans 'paused'
City mayor Sir Peter Soulsby said the market's demolition is an opportunity to consider other uses for the space

NEWS
ByHannah RichardsonLocal Democracy Reporter
13:14, 22 MAY 2024UPDATED13:35, 22 MAY 2024

 

Leicester Market might never return to its historic home, it was announced today. City mayor Sir Peter Soulsby has paused the regeneration of the 700 year-old-market to allow the council time to "consider other options". Those "options" include leaving the old Market Place as an open space and relocating the market stalls to a space due to be opened up between Market Place North and Cank Street.

The mayor said today that the demolition of the old market roof had revealed the “huge potential” of the space formerly occupied by the stalls, and opened up views of the heritage buildings lining the square. He said the revelation had prompted questions over whether installing a new covered market in the square “would be the right thing to do”.

Instead, the city mayor said he was “more than half convinced” the area in front of the historic Corn Exchange building should be left empty to be used as an open space which could host festivals and specialist markets, celebrations such as the recent Leicester City Football Club parade and generally serve as “an important meeting place at the heart of the city centre”.

 

 

Sir Peter added that for the majority of its centuries, the market served as a meeting place in the city, featuring events from Suffragette rallies to coronation celebrations. By pausing the regeneration, Leicester City Council could now take the time to fully explore its future potential, he said.

“I’m sure I’m not the only one who watched the old market roof come down and was blown away by what was revealed,” he told a Press meeting. “As the demolition team cleared the site, I was struck by the scale of the space and the quality of the surrounding architecture. It made me ask myself if we were missing an opportunity to do something really special.

“If we install new permanent infrastructure on the site – with stalls that would be used for just eight hours a day, six days a week – we won’t be able to use this extraordinary space for anything else. And once those new stalls are in place, they’ll probably be there for the next 30 years.

“We therefore have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do something quite bold – and that’s to reconsider our plans and create the impressive, flexible space for large-scale public events that we currently don’t have in Leicester city centre.”

Aerial picture of the demolished Leicester Market space (Image: 2024 Matt Short Photography)
The pause, however, creates a question over what will happen to the market’s traders who moved into Green Dragon Square in December with promises they would be back in their historic home by the end of this year. Market traders told LeicestershireLive at the time that they did not fully believe the plan for the new-look market would come to fruition.

A number of options for the traders are now on the table and Sir Peter said those who run stalls would be involved in the decision making. One possibility is leaving them in Green Dragon Square, Sir Peter said.

However, he added that he was leaning towards moving the fruit and veg market into the new Cank Street link area. Approval was given earlier this year to knock through 14 and 16 Market Place North to create a walkway between Green Dragon Square and Cank Street, using the car park on the Cank Street side as a new trading area. Their neighbours at numbers 12, 18 and 20 were to be refurbished with the intention of renting them out.

However, early ideas for reworking the plans now suggest each of numbers 12 to 20 Market Place could be demolished and the space opened up there be the new home of Leicester Market. The space created “would accommodate a mix of market stalls and container units in an attractive and modern trading environment, protected from the elements by an elegant roof”, a spokesperson for Leicester City Council said.

Early artist's impression of what the Cank Street link market could look like (Image: Leicester City Council)
Sir Peter added: “I met with representatives of the market traders this morning (Wednesday) to explain my shift in thinking and to talk through the ideas. While I fully appreciate their concerns about work being paused on site, I hope I was able to convey that I believe we have an opportunity to make a good scheme even better.

“The proposed location for Leicester Market is a brand new cut-through that would link Market Place with Cank Street and the shops and bars of St Martin’s Square. Footfall would therefore be high – and the market’s proximity to the popular Food Hall would create a strong food-themed destination.”

He added: “This new proposal would provide our market traders with the clean, contemporary and attractive market area they need – and provide the city with a striking open space that could become home to the Christmas ice rink, the summer beach, live performances, outdoor cinema, food and drink festivals, national celebrations, and even open-top bus parades for our brilliant sports clubs.

“Of course there’d be work to do to upgrade and refurbish the beautiful old buildings that surround the space, and to attract the cafés and bars that would help to animate it, but our intention would be to seek funding to support the conservation work and to work with development partners to bring new life to the area.

“I’m now convinced that the right thing to do is to pause work on the current scheme to give people a chance to have their say, and I look forward to hearing those views.”

The original plan for the new-look market would have seen it split into three zones. Zone A, on the side next to the old fish market, would have hosted a new café, planting and public art, and would have had space for temporary stalls for one-off events such as farmers markets and a Christmas market. Zone B, at the heart of the space, would have been the new covered market.

In place of the old wooden structures, 84 “smart new stalls” were to be installed, which Leicester City Council said would have created “an attractive environment for the fruit and vegetable traders and other small businesses”. The stalls would have been set out in an "improved" layout to create better pedestrian routes through the market, the authority added.

There would also have been a selection of “attractive, flexible and lockable units” installed in front of the existing meat and fish market in what was set to be Zone C. This was to have 16 new “high quality and unique” lockable “pods” for traders, the plan showed.

While the original market regeneration plan was expected to be completed towards the end of this year, the new proposals could take years to bring to fruition if chosen as the way forwards.

[Lako42]

So joined up thinking isn't really a thing from the off then. 

 

They didn't consider what the area would look like once opened up and seemed oblivious to the architecture until it was all visable at the same time. 

 

I agree the area might be better used but the lack of foresight is unbelievable 

[davieG]

51 minutes ago, Lako42 said:

So joined up thinking isn't really a thing from the off then. 

 

They didn't consider what the area would look like once opened up and seemed oblivious to the architecture until it was all visable at the same time. 

 

I agree the area might be better used but the lack of foresight is unbelievable 

Hmm I think he did but chose not to say anything until it became harder to stop they have all the plans for the alternative ready and it's not like it's the first time it's been mentioned. Last time the alternative, a set up and take down in Humberstone Gate was considered a poor option and strongly protested against. This time he's got a permanent alternative nearby.