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Making the area better?
Greetings and Salutations, Fellow Stroud Greeners!
The Woodstock Road Association (London's oldest functioning tenants' association) has done an informal but widespread local survey asking folks to outline their top five priorities for our area. Here are the results; tell us what you think:
(1) Install lifts at Finsbury Park station (we're not all young or able-bodied). The Station Place façade was tarted up, but what happened to the rest of the former Finsbury Park Partnership's £25 million?
(2) Establish a green space -- a mini-park (as previously suggested by Haringey council and then reneged on) at the NE corner of Stroud Green Rd & Upper Tollingon Park. 'Stroud Green' would then have a -- er -- Stroud Green [!].
(3) Give us back our 'free speech' community noticeboards, of which there were two -- both on the Haringey side of Stroud Green Road between Upper Tollingon Park and Lorne Road.
(4) How about a neighbourhood centre, or at least somewhere where local groups can get together for meetings and functions at a reasonable hire fee? There's nowhere at the moment.
(5) Regular, and binding, meetings between elected councillors on both sides of Stroud Green Road. We're one community arbitrarily divided between Islington and Haringey, and co-ordination between the two is crucial. An obvious example was the closure of our local Arthur Simpson Library by Islington Council, which took place without people on the 'wrong' side of the road being allowed to participate in the consultation process.
What does everyone make of these ideas?
The Woodstock Road Association (London's oldest functioning tenants' association) has done an informal but widespread local survey asking folks to outline their top five priorities for our area. Here are the results; tell us what you think:
(1) Install lifts at Finsbury Park station (we're not all young or able-bodied). The Station Place façade was tarted up, but what happened to the rest of the former Finsbury Park Partnership's £25 million?
(2) Establish a green space -- a mini-park (as previously suggested by Haringey council and then reneged on) at the NE corner of Stroud Green Rd & Upper Tollingon Park. 'Stroud Green' would then have a -- er -- Stroud Green [!].
(3) Give us back our 'free speech' community noticeboards, of which there were two -- both on the Haringey side of Stroud Green Road between Upper Tollingon Park and Lorne Road.
(4) How about a neighbourhood centre, or at least somewhere where local groups can get together for meetings and functions at a reasonable hire fee? There's nowhere at the moment.
(5) Regular, and binding, meetings between elected councillors on both sides of Stroud Green Road. We're one community arbitrarily divided between Islington and Haringey, and co-ordination between the two is crucial. An obvious example was the closure of our local Arthur Simpson Library by Islington Council, which took place without people on the 'wrong' side of the road being allowed to participate in the consultation process.
What does everyone make of these ideas?
Comments
A note to Andy and Miss Annie: Flexible financial arrangements for small local businesses DO sound like a good idea. This is, indeed, done in Paris (I used to live there, myself). T'would be good to give the likes of Tesco and Sainsbury a run for their money, wouldn't it?
Suppose it depends whether the council(s) thinks a shop is 'right' for the area, and appear happy for places to be stagnant for a very long time rather than let the 'wrong' type of business open up - making the area unattractive to pretty much everyone. Seems a bit hairbrained, but am sure the council boffins have a strategy.
The idea of an actual tiny green at SGR/UTP is nice, would support that.
2. Er . . . I thought Stroud Green already had a ‘green’. I could be wrong but I thought it’s called Finsbury Park.
Of course everyone is for more green space but given that the walls and plantings on the corner of SGR and UPT are not maintained to a good condition now I’m not sure the idea of enlarging it into a ‘green’ makes sense unless a ‘big society’ association is created and funded to maintain it and maybe organise some small events so it just doesn’t become another place to sit and drink beer.
3. Agree with Andy -- not a bad idea but hasn’t SG.com replaced the need?
4. Agree with Andy -- what about local pubs, churches or schools?
5. More communication and cooperation is always welcome.
And to add to the list:
6. Encourage people to tidy up their front gardens. Would it hurt to pull a weed or pick up a crisp bag when it’s on your doorstep? (By the way Woodstock Road has some of the worst offenders.)
7. Plant more street trees.
8. In a perfect world . . . have TFL enforce a strict policy wherein people reading the paper, texting or are otherwise occupied by tasks other then entering or exiting the FP station are beaten to a bloody pulp about the face and neck. . . oh and loved-up couples walking had-in-hand should be slapped silly and reminded it’s the bloody Tube, not Noah’s ark.
@Arkady – supposedly plans were afoot at one time to put the bus station on SGR between Perth and Ennis Roads and this was blocked by residents.
Woody's was an extremely badly run local business but your point hits the nail on the head.
People do always bang on about how they want small local businesses and a varied range of shops but the likes of Home close down because people don't spend money locally. Most people, myself included, are quite lazy and want to get everything in one place rather than trawling the local places. Or they sit on their bums and shop from the internet.
If you go to Crouch End you can witness the laziness of people buying fruit, veg, fish and baked goods in Waitrose when they have Dunns Bakery, a tip top fishmongers and a really fabulous greengrocers (Clocktower - currently stocking the juiciest cherries ever!) within steps of them. They just can't be bothered to walk round.
It beggars belief, it really does.
Point 8 should be made into law immediately.
[ I challenged someone doing this and he said 'it's a collection spot for old stuff and the council collect it every weekend" - !!! I corrected this urban myth and helped him put the sofa back into his hatchback]
Def agree we need a little pocket park.... if you live in a little flat with nor garden its either a walk to Finsbury Park or nought! It would be nice to have a small space to sit down and read the paper in on a sunny day...
community centre is not really feasible in this climate i.e no money at all. But we have all these community spaces that are empty most of the time. People like Father David who is the Priest at St Melitus would prob let any friendly soul use the church's community space if they asked... i am sure there are lots of spaces like this dotted about the area, what facility managers and community groups need to do is to work together to 'sweat' these assets more effectively rather than leaving them empty after 5pm e.g. local schools.
Councillor co-operation - Islington councillors seem to be a bit more responsive now they are running the Council so if we all emailed them from both sides to run such a group something might happen... from working with local govt what we really need is the officers in the council meeting to discuss this rather than just the politicians - prob save both Councils money too... maybe we could have a unified team stroud green that looked after street services for both sides of the area