Hotel California

26 Jul 2010, 14:06 Add Comment

Professional curiosity and Paul Unger's recent blog entry drew me to Bury's Rock development on Saturday. It is after all my local town centre and I was hoping for something to lift the spirits and to replace that occasional trip to Bolton or Manchester to access a slightly higher grade of retail therapy. I was not disappointed - the form and content of the scheme is great, so I can do no more than echo the widespread praise that's been heaped upon it. One could be picky but that's dull and pointless. It's a good scheme - full stop.

There is however a 'but' and it's a pretty big one - big enough for me to question whether I will bother to revisit in a hurry, which is a shame, because I won't be alone in that thought.

The car park does not work.

The maths don't work, nor does the exit system, which in turns highlights flaws in the circulation and general car park management. The result, as I unwittingly experienced, is a potentially monumental disaster - frayed tempers as customers jostle for position in exit queues that reach the roof, and lots of helpless red-faced attendants getting serious flak from the aforementioned customers. The solution so far? Extend the exit time on car park tickets to one hour......that's right.....one whole hour from the time of payment, and when that fails, as it did on Saturday afternoon, open the exit barriers and hope for the best. It took me 30 minutes to exit the car park at 3pm, which was no more than 70% occupied. This is not a problem that can easily be glossed over as mere teething troubles or by the overwhelming popularity of the scheme in its youth.

It's been widely reported that the development has roughly doubled the quantity of retail floorspace in the town and catapulted it to the dizzy heights of No.62 in the CACI town centre rankings. Before the shock of The Rock, Bury was a relatively sleepy town that had been lounging down in 159th spot with about 4,500 very well utilised parking spaces. The scheme's been built largely on a car park that had a couple of hundred spaces, but added only about 600 spaces net for town centre shoppers. I've had a peep at the planning application documents - they assume the development can cope with almost 600 vehicles both entering and leaving the car park at peak times - that means a car needs to exit every six seconds to cope with normal predicted flows. I don't need to go any further into the mathematics - enough said - but even in times where there's a continued effort to get people out of their cars and on to public transport, foot and bike it's not difficult to see that this was always going to be on the eternally optimistic side of ambitious, and in those circumstances the provision for cars that is made has got to work flawlessly. It doesn't.

The caveat's there in the planning documents if you look hard enough - the developer acknowledges that the proposed parking provision has been the subject of considerable discussion, but was set at a level which the (anonymous) 'commercial experts' believe was required to support the scheme. Oh dear, commercial experts.

So, beware you eager visitors to The Rock - by all means be charmed by the presence of this shiny new retail cathedral but beware of the potential consequences. As Eagles aptly warbled in 1977 'You can check out any time you like but you can never leave'. Now, I'm going to sit back and watch a different scramble for the exits - it's scapegoat time!

Your Comments

2 Comments Add Comment

To say the car park is rubbish is an understatement! Its impossible to navigate. The armco is already littered with scrapes and bumps, the pay machines are already broken and it looks virtually impossible to get a spot in the lift. It might be busy now, due to the "excitement" of the new scheme, but I cant imagine Christmas being quiet! There is the Millgate car park, a few yards away, which is probably a better bet - but in all fairness, this also appeared to have been designed to suit cars made by Corgi and not Audi. (and I dont think that the car park is the last revelation on this scheme. It might look shiny and new now, but I think that the quality of the fit and finish might start to tell its own tale soon. I note that they were out relaying flags approx 24 hrs after opening) …

comment by Dead and Bury'ed | 26/07/2010 14:22:52

I live in Bury, slightly closer to the Rock than the Trafford Centre though there is not a lot in it. I had been intending to visit, but you have to PAY to park? No thanks, I'll stick with your bigger competitor thanks! …

comment by Bury resident | 28/07/2010 12:01:35