St Ives Town Regeneration Forum Updates
December Update 2024
Right here in St Ives – have you seen the shop local posters in town? One celebrates the restaurants, pubs and bars where you can wind down with friends and the other promotes the wonderful independent shops around town where you can do all your Christmas shopping locally.
A big thanks to our local galleries and shops for their creative input to the posters design. The Civic Society funded the poster printing and developed the graphics.
Local business owners have been busy with ForSIT developments and are currently running a parking questionnaire with customers and a petition for 1 hour of free parking.
Elsewhere members of ForSIT have been busy processing comments received from residents during the neighbourhood planning process which will be converted into viable plans for revitalising the town and boosting its economy.
Liaison with the shop keepers in Bridge Street is ongoing including the development of a shop front template and improving the town centre signage.
A Community Asset Plan to develop the Octagon, which is owned by Huntingdon District Council, is being explored. A variety of suggestions for its use have been put forward including use as an indoor market, café or theatre. HDC wish to have an internal review to decide what their plans are for the Octagon. In parallel the ForSIT group has been added to the Market Towns network which can give access to funding.
St Ives is also becoming part of HDC’s Pride in Place programme which celebrates regeneration projects.
Regeneration Away Day on 4th July 2024
The meeting broadly covered communication difficulties within the town, retail decline, pedestrianisation, parking/transport, flood/water management, heritage protection, the scruffiness of the town, its ecology and future event creation.
From these topics a regeneration metric was established with which to begin assessing the opportunities and barriers for revitalising the town. Given that Bridge Street was the example used by Simon Ward’s presentation at the previous meeting, it was agreed members would walk along it to note what immediately needs doing.
In addition, members will explore possible funding such as the Shop Front Grants which expires in September 2024 so both new and existing shopkeepers could be reminded to apply quickly. The next meeting will take place in early September 2024.