IIIIIIIIIllIIIIIIIllII1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 ' Environmental Improvement Schemes Some of you will already have had experience of setting up and running environmental improvement schemes, and will know the difficulties and the rewards to be gained. For those who have not as yet been involved in such enterprises and for those who wish to compare their own experiences with others, here are accounts of environmental improvement work carried out by two authorities in Scotland. They describe schemes in Hamilton and Paisley which form important parts of large scale programmes for the economic regeneration of areas of the old town centres. Hamilton Town Centre Facelift Hamilton lies to the south-east of Glasgow within 20 minutes by road of Glasgow City Centre. Historically it had a dual function as a county town and market centre and it is now a second tier shopping centre within· the Regional Hierarchy. It currently serves an expanding catchment area of approximately 250,000 people and in recent years substantial public sector investment in the District's physical and transport infrastructure has taken place. Hamilton's Local Plan which was adopted in 1983 recognised much of the architectural character of the Town Centre and accordingly two Conservation Areas were designated. The largest of these contains the main shopping streets Cadzow Street, Quarry Street and Townhead Street. Cadzow Street was grafted onto the existing street pattern of Hamilton following an Act of Parliament in 1819 and development took place from 1835 onwards. It contains parallel frontages of two and tpree storey stone-built terraces and some individual buildings of great character like William Adam's Parish Church of 1732 or the Royal Bank of Scotland of 1871. Quarry Street, on the other hand, dates from the period 1875-1900 and is related to the extension of the Glasgow/Hamilton railway, in that the construction of the railway was instrumental in Quarry Street taking over the role of principal shopping street from Cadzow Street. Both of the 'crosses' are of relatively recent origin - the Duke Street/Brandon Street cross of c. 1830 and the more architecturally cohesive bottom cross dates from 1900. The character of Quarry Street is mainly of traditional late 19th century stone-built tenements displaying various degrees of ornamentation, and the corner blocks at both crosses provide much townscape interest in the use of turrets and in the sloping form of the streets themselves. The street now pedestrianised between both crosses survives as one of the few remaining examples in West Central Scotland of a largely intact Victorian High Street, and efforts are being made at present, to create rear servicing to ground floor commercial premises which should further increase the street's attractiveness to pedestrian shoppers. Among the draft policies for conservation enhancement at the time of local plan preparation were attempts to encourage owners to cooperate in the preparation and implementation of a scheme for the external treatment of the fabric of buildings in the area which were recognised as deteriorating. In the normal course of events, for such a policy to come to fruition much promotional work would have had to be under-taken and a purely reactive role assumed by the District Council to approaches by blocks of owners and tenants. However, as a result of a joint assessment carried out by the District Council, Strathclyde Regional Council and the Scottish Development Agency on the District's economic potential, the Hamilton Enterprise Partnership was set up with the general objective of stimulating economic activity through a partnership between the business community and the public sector. The Scottish Development Agency has undertaken to fund a programme of environmental improvements costing up to £0.6 million to improve the physical image of the Town Centre. The Town Centre Facelift, as it is known, is concerned with the following categories of work:- (a) Stone cleaning; (b) Facade painting (where stonecladding is not an option); (c) Treatment of gables; (d) Repair of gutters and downpipes; (e) (f) Painting and repair of windows; Removal of all advertising signs above fascia level. It is a condition of the funding for the project that approximately 25% of the cost of such works is borne by owners. There is also an opportunity for work not in the above categories (e.g. roof repairs) to be carried out by the owners at their own expense while scaffolding is up. The Scottish Development Agency has been involved with 'facelift' schemes like this in partnership with Local Authorities since 1979, but the Hamilton Project is doubly interesting because conservation enhancement objectives are being fulfilled within the context of an economic initiative concerned with gathering all public and private resources in a pro-active role. IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII111111111111111 l'I 1111UIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII111111111111111 DJITI111Dll]ffl] 16
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