Category: Regeneration

Help needed with our markets

We need some ideas, energy and enthusiasm to help us develop both our monthly craft markets and our annual arts and crafts fair.

We want to restart our monthly craft market in St James Ave again soon. We learnt a lot from our first year and we now want to take it to the next level.  I think we will be helped when the new Morrisons opens in Blockbusters as this is almost certain to bring many more people to St James Ave.

We’re looking for volunteers interested in any of the following:

•Choosing the stalls for each market

•Managing the booking and admin

•Helping manage the market on the first Saturday of each month

 

The monthly craft market in St James Avenue

 

On top of the monthly craft market, we need a number of volunteers to help with the annual arts and crafts fair each November in St James Church. Martyn has put on some 12 of these annual events and feels now is a good time for a change – so many thanks to Martyn for establishing the arts and crafts fair as a much-anticipated annual event.

 

The areas of interest are similar to the monthly market:

•Choosing the stalls

•Managing the bookings and admin

•Organising the lay out of the market in St James Church

•Helping run the event on the day

•Managing the volunteers who help set up and clean up

 

Both these events are fun to be involved and offer a great opportunity to be at the heart of what’s happening in West Ealing.

 

If you’re interested in helping please email us at westealingneighbours@gmail.com

Two West Ealing events today:

Update on the Green Man Lane Estate development in the Jubilee Hall in Green Man Lane 4.30-8pm

What’s been achieved so far and an opportunity to see the plans for phase 2.

This is the most important development in West Ealing for a generation and phase 1 homes are now for sale. The development will take 8-10 years to complete and will increase the number of residents from around 800 to some 2,ooo. This alone will have a major impact on West Ealing. Add the coming of Crossrail and the redevelopment of the Sherwood Close Estate and there is a lot of change on its way.

What’s happening on our high street – WEN public meeting from 7.30pm at St John’s Church in Mattock Lane

I think West Ealing is on the edge of change, as I’ve said above, and now is a good time to start thinking about what we want our high street to look like in 5 or 10 years time. I think it will look very different but that’s just my opinion. Come along and listen to some ideas and give us your thoughts and hopes as to what you’d like to see for our shopping centre. Is it different shops, fewer shops, more housing or maybe community services taking over empty shops?

As this photo shows, work is already underway on the new hotel in West Ealing following agreement at last night’s (Wednesday 15th May) Planning Committee meeting. The plan is for a new 60-bedroom hotel on the corner of Melbourne Ave and the Uxbridge Road. The concerns about the traders at the top of Melbourne Ave and Luckhurst’s the butchers appear to have all been resolved.  You can read the background to this story here.

The WEN committee will be at the Silva Cafe this Saturday from 11.30am until 12.30pm and anyone is welcome to join us. We’ll have the team working on the feasibility study for a community and business hub in West Ealing joining us to explain their ideas and hear what our thoughts are (see post below). We’ll also be planning our next public meeting which will be about what sort of high stret we’d like to see develop in West Ealing over the next few years. I think West Ealing is on the cusp of change but what do you think?

Building a 60-bedroom hotel on the corner of Melbourne Ave and the Uxbridge Road looks almost certain to mean that some of the traders there – flower stall, card stall – will have to move. The plans for the hotel show a floor to ceiling glass window going part way along the Melbourne Ave side of the hotel. As a result, the traders are fearful of their future. Where will they be moved to? There doesn’t look to be enough room on the hairdresser’s side of the road for them all to fit in. As a result, they have started up a petition against the planned hotel and you can easily find it at the flower stall.

West Ealing Neighbours is considering its response to the planned hotel.  We recognise that this site needs redevelopment of some sort as it’s a bit of an eyesore but is this the best option for the high street? The sort of questions we are concerned about include:

• Do we need another hotel? There are two budget ones half a mile down the road – Premier Inn and Travelodge – plus the revamped Drayton Court Hotel by West Ealing station.
• It’s not likely to create all that much new employment for such a central high street site.
• There is no car park planned. Admittedly, most guests will probably come by public transport but will that bring extra pressure on the nearby roads which are currently CPZ free but getting more and more heavily parked up.
• It will mean more lorries crossing Melbourne Ave to access the rear delivery bays and do we want this? Some years back we proposed that a new access road go through part of the library car park. This was turned down because the mobile library bus was parked there overnight. The bus has now gone so we come back to the idea of lorries delivering to Lidl’s and the other shops by this new route and not across the mainly pedestrianised Melbourne Ave.
• Luckhurst’s the butchers will have to close for at least 6 months whilst the building work takes place. Tony Luckhurst runs one of the few traditional butchers left in the area. Will he re-open?