Its coming up to Christmas as my older and myself have an affectionate view on a building that sadly was long demolished. It also comes up in my work environment..
The more I look at it, the more interesting it becomes is the way I look at it, now as I spent most of my life near Portsmouth, UK and my age, it would be natural I certainty remember one building that really suffered from a lot of problems with council cutbacks, bad maintenance and a wet climate, the Tricorn Centre which its demolition in 2004 has pretty much divided Portsmouth. As an interesting point, its also a common topic between my manager and myself – now also another worker who is from nearby Fareham.
It gets me thinking, I don’t think I ever released these photos before, but I took these photos just before or right at the start of demolition in 2004, in fact, I think they were around April/May 2004.
I was born towards the end of its life, but I remember being scared as a 6 year old of the lift in the lift tower as it suffered badly from neglect, later in years, I was a bit worried about walking underneath the building as seeing the steel reinforcement look like it was on the verge of failure on one of the protruding structure that was hanging in mid air! These are some of the issues it suffered from but was still salvageable if Portsmouth City Council got their act together which as seen later, never did! Its a bit ironic that the building that was a giant carpark was replaced what was meant to be temporarily – another carpark! (One ironically, I never recall using, I used the Cascades car park instead, which is right next door and better located.) Of course “temporary” ideas often stay permeant as what happened here. The site was meant to be redeveloped into another shopping centre that was to compliment the Cascades, but the rival to the Cascades is in fact Gunwharf Quays which is less than a mile away and ultimately, the plans were shelved.
Its a shame, Portsmouth lost a lot of retail space and now Commercial Road is starting to struggle especially after post COVID and that’s how you get a council that is inept at making decisions. Demolish a useful building by paying nothing towards its upkeep, contract the useful space, drive the shoppers out and complain you can’t regenerate the area. In fact, Debenhams has failed and that was a big department store, without it, Commercial Road is quieter.
On a different note, while talking about councils inept at maintenance and upkeep, when I worked at West Sussex County Council way back in 2013, I remember a conversation about the lift inside Chichester library having a leaky gearbox, the conversation was something like “we filled the gearbox up and its still leaking.” “In 44 years, I don’t think a penny has been spent on its maintenance.”, its probably gone into the top councillors pocket as a bonus.