Aerial view of Bootham Crescent (Google)

After a walk in the park, and with a big sigh, I have to return to the subject mentioned as ‘breaking news’ a couple of weeks back — plans for the housing development at the football ground.

As I’ve previously mentioned, this is close to home and quite a difficult thing to cover, because of my awareness of the significance of it on many levels, but particularly to York City fans, and to some of us living close to the ground for a long time. Many layers of meaning and memory here at the city’s football ground.

But I certainly can’t ignore it. And there are many approaches to it, so let’s get on with it. Some aspects need highlighting as the cultural heritage of this site needs wider recognition, and there is an opportunity at present to send comments to the developer, Persimmon. Currently we’re in the ‘pre-application’ stage, before a planning application is submitted.

The consultation on 20 September was the standard thing developers are expected to do these days. As explained in Persimmon’s leaflet/feedback form:

City of York Council’s Statement of Community Involvement (SCI) recommends that developers undertake public consultation on major projects, such as this proposal, to inform the detail of the development prior to the submission of an application for planning permission.

This consultation is being undertaken in accordance with the Council’s SCI.

… Your comments will feed into the development of the scheme that will be submitted to the Council. We will produce a report which will form part of the planning application, and it will summarise the issues that you have raised with us during the consultation period.

It will set out any changes made to the proposals in response to your comments. If you suggest changes which cannot be accommodated the reason(s) for this will also be set out in the report.

The Persimmon feedback form also states that they ‘welcome your comments and suggestions for potential improvements to the scheme.’

These can be sent by email, by 11 October 2018 to:

yorkshire.land@persimmonhomes.com

2002, and now

Some readers, particularly if they’re fans of York City FC, may remember an earlier Persimmon planning application (ref 02/02212/FUL), back in 2002, during particularly bleak and grim times.

The documents aren’t available online, but I’ve been looking at photocopies. It’s interesting to see how the plans for the same site have changed, 16 years on.

As envisaged back then (2002)

In the 2018 plans, the entrance to the development has shifted, with the access road in a different place. Fewer houses/flats are proposed for the site. The proportion of houses to flats is very different. And the green space has shifted from a fairly central position to one side of the site.

Image of proposed housing development for Bootham Crescent football ground, from Persimmon, Sept 2018

Numbers, access road, green space

Compared to the planning application in 2002, fewer homes are proposed for the site: around 80 now, rather than the 93 back then. It does seem to be the case fairly often with planning applications that having got permission the developers go back and want to increase the number of dwellings, so ‘around 80′ might end up being more than that.

More interesting perhaps is that the number of apartments has been reduced considerably. Around 18 is my understanding, compared to 48 apartments in the 2002 plans. The apartment-building boom of the previous decade presumably provided enough apartments elsewhere in the city.

The other noticeable changes from the 2002 application are firstly, the placement of the access road, and secondly, the placement of the green space. The first of these might matter only to local residents around the ground. The green space is of more significance and interest, or should be, because this piece of land has always been green space of some kind, though the terracing and the stands and the car park have covered the edges of it over time.

In the 2002 plans, the green space proposed was more central, and looked like part of it might be where the pitch is currently. As the documents for that planning application said:

‘the central area of public open space will be laid out in the form of a square providing a focal point for the area and the local community.’
(Planning statement, July 2002)

In the 2018 proposals the green space has been positioned to the west side of the site, where the Popular Stand is (popularly known as the Pop Stand). The proposed green space extends to the football ground’s boundary with Duncombe Barracks, where there’s a line of mature trees very close to the back of the stand, on the barracks side of the boundary.

A representative from Persimmon told me that this relocation of the green space came from pre-application discussions with the council’s planning department.

The barracks site, owned by the MoD, is now surplus to requirements, and according to the city council’s website the council are interested in buying it for housing development. If it is also redeveloped for housing, a larger area of open space could be made around those mature trees. That appears to be the thinking. If so, and if leaving space around the trees means the remaining trees are kept, then that’s a good thing.

On the other hand, as I mentioned in an earlier page, it seems important to have at least some green space more centrally located in the new development, part of where the pitch has been for all these decades. Some kind of proper marker and recognition. It would be better if this recognition of the city’s sporting heritage wasn’t in the middle of someone’s front garden.

History, heritage

Football grounds like this aren’t like other bits of land. They have communal significance, deep meaning and memory, for generations of people. I think we all recognise that. Many generations of people have watched sporting events here. Including, recently, some very exciting rugby league games, when York City Knights have entertained a ‘bouncing Bootham Crescent‘ crowd.

So it has recently served as a rugby ground and for decades as a football ground, and before it was a football pitch it was a cricket pitch. From the thecardindex.com website, a couple of lovely images of this piece of land, back then.

‘Ye Olde Time Cricket Match. York. July 22.08.’ From thecardindex.com, on this link.

Source: thecardindex.com

Not cricket, but apparently a running race about to start, in what looks like the area that is now the football ground’s car park, with Newborough Street in the background.

And before it was a cricket pitch and sports ground it would have been fields … but there are no available photos of that. The distinctively shaped site is included on the 1852 map.

Whether as a wilder place or the carefully maintained grassland of a sports pitch, this piece of land has been green for centuries, but not for much longer.

Thoughts

Thinking about the planning application from 2002, looking at photocopies of it, reminds me of how close the football club was to losing its home back then. I think about how that was resolved, back then, and how Bootham Crescent was saved ‘for the foreseeable future‘. How resonant that phrase seemed at the time, and still does, though that future held a lot of things that weren’t foreseeable after all. And how ‘foreseeable’ ended up meaning a ten-year period, how ten years seemed like such a long time, and then ended up being longer than that, with the various delays to the building of the replacement stadium, out at Monks Cross.

A valuable piece of land, and it can be viewed in so many ways, as plans for its future become clearer. Residents might look at the plans for the site and think about the increased traffic, and parking problems, and the noise and dust from the demolition and the building site, and the usual concerns residents have when such changes are proposed close to their homes. Persimmon are there to build houses and make profit, and of course if it wasn’t them it would be another house builder. For many York City fans there’s a deep and significant sense of loss in this, a feeling of losing a home.

So — no actual planning application yet, in this ‘consultation’/pre-application stage — but if the above has inspired any thoughts on how this piece of land should look in the future then you might want to send them to yorkshire.land@persimmonhomes.com,  by 11 October 2018. Might be a good idea to put ‘Bootham Crescent’ as the subject, as that looks like a fairly generic email address. I suspect Persimmon own a lot of ‘yorkshire.land’.

. . . . .

It took a while to write this, to get the tone right, to get the facts in. It’s not fun, thinking about this. Please send coffees.

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Comments?

Please keep any comments as calm and thoughtful as possible, in recognition of the fact that I created a page that was as calm and thoughtful as possible, and that this is my website, which is like an online home, of sorts. I’ll probably have to remove anything that’s too angry/derogatory about individuals/rude about Persimmon, so please do any sweary/angry/personally defamatory stuff on social media, not here. Thanks.

Update: Historic England project

In recognition of the heritage significance of the ground, Historic England has a project running at present led by heritage consultant Jason Wood. It will ‘explore what people value about the place and will consider how those memories might be captured for the future’. Fans and locals are urged to get in touch with Jason (jwhcs@yahoo.co.uk) with their memories of the ground and ideas for its re-development. There’s more information on the football club website. Thanks to Claire who alerted me to this project.

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Let’s go for a little walk … starting by the gasworks wall. A fragment of it remaining, on the snicket between Heworth Green and Layerthorpe, next to a building site.

Hotels, hotels, hotels … Layerthorpe

There’s a hotel being built here. At the end of the snicket, turning right towards town, we meet the junction at the end of Hallfield Road. Looking back to where another section of gasworks wall used to be until quite recently, where a new road is coming through. The new hotel is on the left of this photo.

More on that story later perhaps.

… and Peasholme Green

Continuing on towards the city centre, in a straight line up Layerthorpe and then onto Peasholme Green, we arrive at the Black Swan, a well-known historic pub. Here it is pictured in May 2014.

Since the photo above was taken the Black Swan has had the Hiscox building overshadow it on the right, but the curved glass of that building reflects it, in what is generally seen as an impressive addition to the cityscape.

The view shown above would be drastically altered by a large hotel building planned for the site behind it. This planning application will be decided at a planning committee meeting this week — Thursday 23 March. Further details and documents for the application are on this link:

16/02801/FULM | Erection of five storey hotel (use class C1) | Former Haymarket Car Park Dundas Street York

York Civic Trust have objected, referring to the planned hotel as ‘uninspiring in design and consequently detrimental to both adjacent properties of historic and aesthetic merit’. Historic England state that ‘we are somewhat disappointed with the architectural massing and appearance of the scheme’. Many individuals have also objected.

Nevertheless the report prepared for the meeting (on this link, PDF) recommends approval, as these reports so often do.

Developers often have to make some kind of contribution to the local townscape/community, in the form of a section 106, as is the case here. The report suggests that the developer could contribute £18,000 to street improvement works on the opposite side of the road. Seems a very small contribution from such a large profit-making development?

Apparently it would be a ‘Moxy’ hotel. I’ve struggled with this brand name ever since first reading it. I can only think of the word ‘poxy’, and the ‘m’ makes me think of words like maudlin and morose. Maybe that’s just me. But anyway, I’ve just been reading about these ‘Moxy’ hotels. Apparently, according to the official info, a Moxy hotel ‘comes at a cost to build that is very easy to digest’. The link also leads to a PDF referring to ‘a robust demand generation engine that drives top-line revenue while maximizing bottom-line savings’.

So if they’re not too expensive to build and the staff aren’t going to get paid a lot perhaps a bit more could be reinvested in the streetscape then, so we can admire the paving rather than having to look at the hotel? Or perhaps elected officials could refuse to grant permission and wait for something that doesn’t just feel like yet another investment opportunity being plonked into our streets.

It’s important to note that York is a hotel ‘hotspot’, placed second in this year’s UK Hotels Market Index. We’re almost top of the league when it comes to being a desirable location for investors to acquire an existing hotel or develop a new one.

Doesn’t fill me with joy, I have to say. Does it you?

As usual the meeting to discuss this and other applications will be webcast live and also available to view later too if you miss it. The agenda for the meeting and further info is on this link.

… and Piccadilly

We continue on from Peasholme Green, along Stonebow and Pavement, turning left into Piccadilly. We were here a couple of weeks back, and we’re back again as it’s all happening on Piccadilly. The plans for 46-50 Piccadilly — next to Ryedale House — are now online and open for viewing and comment.

Another hotel.

17/00429/FULM | Erection of part 5/part 6 storey hotel (140 bedrooms) with ground floor restaurant and 6 storey building comprising 8 no. apartments (class C3) | Proposed Hotel 46 – 50 Piccadilly York YO1 9NX

The Press reported recently that Northminster, who own the site, might withdraw their plans because of the Spark:York planning application for the site over the road.

Interesting on so many levels. The comments under the Press article cover many of the thoughts many of us may be having about the various perspectives on and interpretations of this situation, so I don’t think I need to go into them here.

The main thing, perhaps, is the bridge access the Northminster plans offer. The hotel plan includes space on one side for access to a pedestrian bridge across the Foss, or as the Design and Access statement puts it: ‘Boundary treatment is pulled inboard of the site boundary on the south-east edge of the site to facilitate access to any potential pedestrian bridge planned as part of the Castle Gateway proposals by CYC.’ The bridge has been part of the wider plans for the area for many years. It’s included in the council’s Castle Gateway plans I wrote about earlier.

The Castle Gateway plans depend on various parties working together. Not looking that good so far is it, with Northminster already wanting to control what happens on other sites nearby that they don’t own.

More on this story later perhaps, when we know a date for the Spark:York application going to the planning committee for consideration.

Let’s head back up Piccadilly, and get some motorised transport perhaps, as we’re heading for the suburbs — to the mean streets of Clifton …

Corner House becomes Heron Foods

Heron Foods used to occupy a retail unit in the centre of town, on Stonebow, but it had to close for the gentrification of Stonebow House. At least one person missed it enough to write a letter to the Press.

Guess where it’s relocated to? To my patch, the Clifton area. To that building I wrote about a few times: the former Corner House pub.

The shop opened this week, on 20 March. The signage is a bit garish, but at least this reuses a building rather than flattening it, which is what should always happen, wherever possible, (and should be possible with that other building I wrote about recently). We can still see that it was built as a pub, even if it isn’t one anymore, and it links us back to the history of this residential area.

A quick walk up the street and round the corner takes us to Bootham Crescent, the home of York City FC. Which takes us to the last ‘H’ of this week’s title …

Happy Wanderers

On Saturday a line of coaches full of York City supporters set off from the Bootham Crescent ground. Many of us who didn’t travel to Lincoln listened attentively to the game on all the various devices the 21st century offers us. Some of us managed to listen to it on an old AM/FM radio out in the garden by wrapping an piece of wire we found in the shed round the stump of a snapped-off aerial, to get the FM frequency. Or maybe that was just me.

So, the club is celebrating getting to Wembley again, for the FA Trophy final. Hurrah. That will be in May. For now, in March, a reminder of another happy time in the history of York City FC, from another March, 62 years ago:

It’s the other half of a pair of programmes that had managed to survive intact in a cardboard box under a leaky roof. It belonged to George, who is on the right of the photo of the ‘Gasworks Gang’, on this page from some years back. This ‘souvenir pictorial record and story’, as the cover puts it, seems to have been produced for that game they were going to on 26 March 1955. Note the illustrations of birds dressed as footballers/supporters on the front cover. They’re robins, for reasons explained here.

And the Happy Wanderers thing? I wondered too. It’s from a song, popular at that time. I think this might be the one.

I found a couple of other songs coming to mind as I started this page, which I thought I’d share in case anyone’s feeling a bit jaded and in need of relaxation or jolliness after all that reading. That fragment of gasworks wall where we started always brings to mind the first line of this rather poignant tune, and the page started with the first line of this 1970s delight. Watch Showaddywaddy in the 70s and try to forget about how much of York is being bought up and overdeveloped to service the requirements of outside investors?

Well, it looks like that to me. Quite happy to be wrong.

. . . . .

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So much going on in York, so many planning applications etc, but this week let’s escape into some gentle nostalgia, and head back to a time when Sutler’s bar was Army and Navy Stores and groups of football fans were ‘Specially Catered For’ in the local cafes.

Before it’s returned to its owner, I have permission to share with you these scans of a 1955 football programme. Which, as you can see, is signed by the players. It’s one of a pair of programmes from that year, from matches taking place in February and March 1955, a famous cup-run for York City Football Club. We’ve mentioned it before, when looking at a photo of the Gasworks Gang.

As well as a couple of names I recognised in the signatures on the front of the programme (Norman Wilkinson and Arthur Bottom) the other obvious thing is the ad for Army and Navy Stores. It sold ‘Beva’ boots, apparently famous and presumably different from ‘bovver’ boots.

The programme was printed at the Herald Printing Works.

There’s an advert for the Bootham Bar Cafe inside the front cover:

The nearest cafe to the football ground, with ‘Football Parties Specially Catered For’, it says. Also, I was surprised to see that there was a shop selling sports equipment at the top of Bootham Crescent. Anyone remember that?

There’s also an ad for that well-known York department store Leak and Thorp’s, selling not only the Wolsey X Front but the Cooper Y Front.

From adverts to the team info:

Different times, weren’t they. Norman Wilkinson, it tells us, is a ‘part-time player who works as a cobbler in his native County Durham’. Sidney Storey, another part-time player, is a miner at Darfield, near Barnsley.

Then more ads in the centre pages:

Many of the businesses advertising in this programme aren’t around now, but we see a familiar name on an ad inside the back cover, selling ‘Tools for all trades':

And alongside one of many adverts for booze a helpful list of York’s cafes and restaurants, in the days when there were far fewer of them.

On the back cover, a lady enjoys her Magnet Ale — apparently a half pint, in a ladylike glass.

. . . . .

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A piece inspired by the My Future York project. An imaginary walk/cycle ride through York in 2026 … a utopian vision of how I’d like my side of town to be.

. . . . .

On Burton Stone Lane there’s an entrance to the football and rugby ground, on what used to be the MoD land of Lumley Barracks. The plans for a new ‘community stadium’ at Monks Cross were eventually abandoned after growing ludicrously bloated and unworkable, and a way was found to keep the football club at Bootham Crescent. The MoD land became available, and in a sudden surprise move the massively profitable housebuilder Persimmon decided to be philanthropic in the city where its business had begun, and instead of building houses on the Bootham Crescent ground, as had been the plan, it bought the whole site, and the MoD land, and donated it to the people of the city.

The new stadium has the necessary upgrade in facilities, and is also used by the rugby club. It’s still in the heart of the community, in the same place now for almost 100 years. Both York City FC and York City Knights are now doing well, with larger attendances.

Bootham Park hospital has reopened, and the forbidding ‘no unauthorised persons’ signs around the site have been removed. The double gates to Bridge Lane have been repaired and are now open, allowing cyclists to access the site more easily without the danger of colliding with pedestrians. The former ‘gala field’ is used for community events and the green space is better appreciated and cared for.

The journey from this part of York to the station has been made much easier since the construction of a new more accessible bridge alongside the old Scarborough Bridge, on the Clifton side. It curves across the river, set higher than the riverside paths so that it’s still accessible in times of flood. The floods are less dramatic these days, as there has been more work upstream to manage the flow before it reaches York.

The new curvy bridge over the river takes us into York Central. It’s possible to walk or cycle right through the middle of this area, to reach Holgate Road and Water End. It’s still a work in progress, but parts of it have been built. The tallest buildings, a mix of offices and residential blocks, are carefully sited so as not to block light from the rest of the site. Here, open parkland areas have been created and planted with trees – proper woodland trees like beech, oak and horse chestnut.

A strip of land planted with meadow flowers has extended from the original wildflower meadow around the Holgate arch right along the edge of the site, a river of flowers leading to the carriageworks canteen building.

The canteen was saved and has a new use as a community centre and business start-up space. On its walls are massive images of the carriageworks site in the past, and its workers, including those iconic images of all the bikes streaming out into the Holgate Road traffic. A ‘borrow a bike’ scheme based here pays homage to that memory. Outside and through the wildflower areas are information boards giving a history of the site and what was built here, with a plan of where all the rail workshops were when the site was at its peak. The ‘pride’ we talked about so much in the mid-1990s when the carriageworks closed has eventually been revived, thirty years later, through a thoughtful reuse of the site and its surviving buildings.

The new and old sit more happily together now. There’s not that conflict there used to be between those who want ‘progress’ and those who used to be labelled ‘the heritage brigade’. More people have come to have a wider and deeper appreciation of this city’s heritage and also of their own, and how the two fit together, and there’s a recognition that intelligent development (‘progress’) means working with what’s there, building on that.

Alongside the excitement of all things new and innovative there’s a growing recognition of the fact that it’s fairly easy to start things but much harder to keep them going, how much work and commitment it takes. A while back it was all about innovators and innovating. Now the focus is on maintainers, maintaining. In line with that, a new shopping area behind the station on the York Central development has been massively popular, featuring only those businesses with an established local presence dating from the 1980s or earlier. Many businesses ended up moving out of the walled city, as bars and restaurants moved in. York Central has its own fairly new ‘high street’, with a branch of Barnitts in the middle of it.

Heading back towards the city centre we pass the retained and improved Railway Institute buildings near the station, and pedestrians and those on two wheels can pass through the quiet arches under Queen Street bridge, taking the line the trains used to take, in the mid-19^th century, right up to West Offices, the station at that time.

At West Offices there’s a drop-in centre where residents can get details of planning applications and comment on them or discuss them with other residents and local councillors. The old ‘us and them’ attitude has gone, after more residents began to engage with the planning process and put pressure on the authorities to make changes in the way plans were presented. An improved online system has meant greater participation and understanding, and the Residents Planning Centre here at West Offices is usually lively and buzzing, with a good atmosphere, and occasional laughter even.

Leaving West Offices we can then walk along the city walls. Though many changes were proposed to the moats and mounds around the walls most of these weren’t put in place as residents campaigned to preserve the existing views. These have been enhanced by further planting of wildflowers right around the walls. The buzzing of bees can be heard as we pause to admire the view towards the Minster, which looks much the same as it did ten years ago, and a century ago.

Over the other side of Lendal Bridge the library and city archives continue to provide a valuable and well-used service.

If we walk past there, out of the city centre, up Gillygate and Clarence Street and onto Haxby Road, we find that an offshoot of the library and archives has recently opened in the newly refurbished Joseph Rowntree Memorial Library, alongside the Nestle South development. Lights are on in the old Rowntree factory building. People are living in there now.

Behind it there’s a new cycle track heading off towards Bootham Stray, which is still open land there for us, as it always was. Or we can cross the road and go past the allotments, towards Clifton Backies, then onto Kingsway, where the green space between the houses is also full of flowers, and bees buzzing. There are benches made by local residents, which are never vandalised, and there’s no litter on the ground, here or anywhere.

. . . . .

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Plaque on the Mansion House, 30 April 2014

Let’s gather here, outside the Mansion House, near the entrance to the Guildhall, as we conclude this month-long experiment of a daily page based around an ‘April daily photo‘. The building is currently undergoing major renovation, so we can’t actually see this plaque at the moment, but as this is an imaginary gathering that probably doesn’t matter.

I took this photo of the plaque on the Mansion House on this day two years ago, after noticing its rather quaintly dated/somewhat sexist wording. It would be phrased differently now, with something a bit more inclusive and 21st century. ‘His or her’ or perhaps ‘their’. They’re expensive to make, these bronze plaques, so rather than replace it perhaps we could just write in ‘or her’ after the ‘his’, with Tippex.

Because, as I’m sure we’re all aware, Lord Mayors aren’t all male, we have female ones too. I suspect that anyone who wasn’t aware of that before will have become aware of it in recent months, as the current Lord Mayor has been rather more ‘high profile’ than her predecessors.

We’re about to launch into the jolly month of May, which sees not only Morris dancers dancing and cow parsley flowering but also the city’s ‘Mayor making’, when the city gets its new Lord Mayor for the year. This year it’s on 26 May, and will no doubt involve a procession similar to the one I wrote about some years back.

In 2012 it was a particularly giddy and delightful May-time, with accompanying (and even more uplifting) celebrations for York City Football Club. Standing in front of the Mansion House, as we’re imagining we’re doing, we might remember the jubilant scenes and singing around an open-top bus, parked up here outside the Mansion House after a victory parade through the streets.

No celebrations on that front this year.

The Lord Mayor and the football team are both seen to ‘represent’ the city, in their different ways. Though we’re seeing a change of Lord Mayor I don’t know if we’ll see a complete change of personnel in the football team, and don’t pretend to know enough about that subject to have an opinion on it. But I hope that the city will be represented well in the coming year by its football team and its Lord Mayor.

Best of luck to Dave Taylor, soon to be Lord Mayor, best of luck to York City FC, and let’s hope for a sunny day for the ‘Mayor making’.

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‘As usual this meeting of council is being filmed for live broadcast via the internet so that more people can get a chance to see the meeting live and feel involved in their local democracy.’

— said Lord Mayor Cllr Gillies at the start of last night’s council meeting. Certainly seems to be effective, judging by reaction on Twitter. We were feeling very involved indeed.

If you’d like to watch the meeting from the start, the first part is on this link. It’s split into sections, with others available on this link.

As someone once said, ‘everything is political’. Anyone who cares about the city, its present state and future plans, has to engage to some extent in Guildhall goings-on. It’s much easier to do that these days, as technology takes us into the heart of it all. Last night’s meeting of the council engaged many more people, and in the end it all went rather beautifully, in that it seemed to properly represent the finer and nobler parts of that thing we call democracy.

I just wanted to mention a couple of parts of what was a long and eventful meeting. Four speakers who spoke passionately. These excerpts have been carefully cued to start at the appropriate places – I hope it works. Please do have a watch/listen.

Two councillors

Excerpt from council meeting (click to play)

At the start of proceedings two councillors in my own ward of Clifton made speeches widely reported in the media today. I’ve been waiting for the video to be uploaded, as I think this is one of those times when we need to see and hear them speak, not just read their words, to get the proper picture. They’re introduced by Lord Mayor Ian Gillies.

They’re followed by council leader James Alexander, who during other parts of this long meeting came across very well — he’s an excellent speaker on things he really cares about — but here … well, judge for yourself.

(If the image link doesn’t work, try this link, and go to about 1 min 30 secs.)

I don’t communicate much with my local councillors, and it’s a while since I’ve had any contact with Cllrs Scott and King. It was good to see them speak so honestly. Like many Labour voters in this city I had serious concerns about the current administration here in York and felt I couldn’t vote Labour in the council elections next year. But I can now vote for Cllrs Scott and King, as they clearly care about Clifton and its people, and that’s what matters.

[Update … December 2014 … not so sure now about voting … back to being a floating voter, floating between Labour or Independent Labour or Green. Still thinking about it.]

More on this from the Press

Two York City supporters

Excerpt from council meeting (click to play)

This was the main reason I tuned in to the webcast. That community stadium issue, with its long history, stretching back so many years.

I don’t want the football club to leave Clifton, to leave Bootham Crescent, but I know that it has to, and I know, because I was involved in the protests over a decade ago, how hard won it was, keeping hold of Bootham Crescent for this long. As emphasised here by Sophie Hicks.

She’s followed by Frank Ormston, who talks about the club’s history, to remind those listening why it deserves support in the crucial vote for funding for its future.

(If the image link doesn’t take you to the right bit of the proceedings, try this link, and go to 37 mins 31 secs.)

The vote last night was important to many people packed into the public gallery and watching on a screen in a nearby room, as well as to many of us watching the webcast and discussing it on Twitter.

Here for key vote on funding for #yorkstadium. Interest massive for #ycfcfans, this is the overflow room at Guildhall pic.twitter.com/seyK61txtJ

— Nick Morris (@YorkPolRep) October 9, 2014

See The Press for more on the vote on the community stadium plans.

Two other things

Also of interest, and featuring in this unusually eventful meeting, the future of the Burton Stone Community Centre, which may feature in a future page, and that very big issue of the Local Plan, and specifically how many houses and where we’re going to put them. More on those stories later perhaps.

Beautiful digital democracy

City of York council meetings can be viewed live on www.york.gov.uk/webcasts or on the council’s YouTube channel later.

I wonder what other York residents feel when watching these full council meetings in the Guildhall. I find them always interesting, and in parts very moving. Inspiring even, in the ‘public participation’ section. Watching all those different people, often nervous, passionate, standing up to speak, in that ancient place, so much a part of York’s long history. So many people packed in, all ages, backgrounds.

The party-political bickering can be a bit tedious, and I rarely manage to watch a meeting all the way through, but overall I think it’s an excellent thing that technology enables so many of us to watch the workings of our local democracy.

Comments welcome, but anything personally abusive or vindictive or sweary will be removed, because this is my site, and we don’t like that kind of thing here. It’s not Twitter ;)

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