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Comments
The park is controlled by three boroughs so it will take them for ever to implement and fund any plan but when they do you can be certain that the numerous committees who share the responsibility of being our social/leisure guardians and procurement tsars will have considered the needs of the many and the few - then tossed a coin to see who should be ignored and will done what they want anyway. [ A small bet anyone? on whatever facility is built being closed within three months due to a health & safety oversight? that's the recent form in FP the past 15-20years]
The hard standing that was the tennis courts is not a prime piece of the park it has been co-opted for all kinds of things but it's a revolting surface to play on and long overdue for updating. Using it for 5-a-side with club house or whatever still leaves a vast acreage for free use, the majority of the park in fact! where there a lot of facilities on site for children, bike lessons, skateboarding, running etc. - Still it's easy to forget these when you interest is to exagerrate for effect I suppose
[ How come there was no outcry when the train spotters platform next to the footbridge disappeared years ago?!]
If the plan involves adding streetlights in the park, I'm even more thoroughly against it. I like having somewhere I can go get a decent look at the stars sometimes.
I remember when there used to be one near here - where the Finsbury Experience is now, actually - you could just walk in there for nothing and play football or basketball or play with your kids.
I can't imagine how it worked. I think the Finsbury Experience is great, now that they've got armed guards on all the gates and admission isn't too expensive (as long as you're earning good money, of course!)
I hear that the company that owns it is planning special corporate Finsbury Experience weekends when it will be closed to everyone except the sponsors and their families. I've no objection to that - after all, it was they who invested all that money in it and made it what it is today!
I gather from a local historian that many years ago, before the Finsbury Experience was launched, a paid-for five-a-side football project was proposed. Believe it or not, some people objected that it would be a step towards "privatising" the park and making it less accessible to people round about. What a bunch of losers they must have been in those days!
And the mere idea of 'efficiency' as applied to a park gives me the heebie-jeebies. The whole joy and beauty of a park is that it's a glorious monument to inefficiency, as expressed by a hundred people reading on their lunch break or kiting or playing croquet...similarly, 'organised exercise' can be left to China as far as I'm concerned. PE lessons at school were bad enough.
(Which reminds me of something else: according to the park byelaws, a lot of the stuff people get up to in the park is *technically* against the rules. I forget whether this includes football outside designated areas, it certainly includes a lot of of other games including aforementioned croquet. These laws are, at present, enforced sensibly. ie, not at all, unless someone's being problematic and they need an excuse to chuck 'em out. Will that attitude continue once there's a profit motive to force footballers into certain areas? We'll see)
But what bothers me about the proposal is that the paved space may not be pretty but it is hardly underutilised! It's filled with people using it everytime I'm in the park at least when the weather is warmer.
If any sports space is underutilised it's the fields in the NE corner. Why not build the 5-aside pitches there?
Saying you are going to "give up on this thread" simply because you disagree with the tenor of a contribution is a good example of "taking your ball home". Not very constructive!
Come on, stand your ground. Surely that's what websites like this are for - honest, healthy discussion!
When you want to raise something on this website you click on "start a new discussion". There's a clue in that. Discussing (local)issues absolutely is what this website is for - unless I'm missing something.
If so I'm sure you will enlighten me.
Just like how responsive they were about traffic calming in the 20mph zone? That was only a month or two further from the elections.
So keep the park public so we can all enjoy it.
OK there's already a lovely old-fashioned bowling club and a baseball pitch, but I don't thing they are in the same league (excuse the pun) as a full-on commercial operation being given space on publicly-owned land.
I'm not doctrinaire, but you have to draw the line somewhere!
Why bring this to the table in the depths of winter when the entire park is virtually deserted? Very few people will be around to see the planning consent notices on lampposts should the council progress with this.
In my mind, for this to get support the council has to offer something to all the local users who would be displaced. If revenue from this private company is put back into visible resources for the wider community then it would get my support.
Though it is a bit forlorn, the space as it stands is open for all manner of uses and to a wide group within the community. A 5-a-side complex is one pastime, played by one pretty narrow demographic - blokes of a certain age who can no longer hack running the length of an 11-a-side pitch. (Yes, am generalising, but I've played 5's for years and have only seen a handful of ladies playing).
Everyone has their place though (and pays their C/Tax to have leisure facilities), so I'd hope a replacement resource would be made available somewhere.
By the way, g-unit, interesting that you pick up on the equal opportunities angle. If you go onto the website for Powerleague (almost certainly one of the contenders) ALL the pictures of people playing football are boys and men. The ONLY picture showing women is - guess what - the one to do with hiring rooms for social events - "Hold your special event in one of Powerleagues stylish function rooms."
I think this proposal can be challenged not just on the principle of handing over public resources to a commercial operation, or that it would deprive people of a space for their various activities, or that is environmentally unfriendly with the parking space for 60-80 cars, but also that it goes fundamentally against any equal opportunities policy.
The more I read about the 5 a-side industry, and it is a growing, profit-making business, the less I like this plan.
This isn’t simply about putting in a few pitches to meet community demand. Everyone has been focusing on the 80 parking spaces, and rightly so, but the proposal also includes:
floodlights
pavilion housing changing rooms
an office
bar or social club
I don’t see how the space can accommodate all these uses.