OPINION: And a river runs through it

Photo: Carter

The River Roch 1903

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“Between flattery and admiration there often flows a river of contempt.” Minna Antrim

And so it appears, the long awaited plans to remove the greater proportion of the Roch covering are about to come into fruition.

The completed works are hard to visualise; not least because the precise details have yet to be worked out and question marks still hover over some aspects of funding.

The photos taken before the covering was completed in 1926 give us some clues but don’t exactly inspire us. For a start, the buildings are covered in black soot and even a photograph taken on a fine day cannot disguise the thick smog that hung over the town like a thick, yellow blanket for much of the year. The stench from the dye-stained, sewage-laden, heavily polluted waters can scarcely be imagined in this post-industrial age.

Planning is first and foremost about people. If the people aren’t behind it or if it fails to inspire them then it will fail. With this project, early indications are good. A straw-poll conducted by Rochdale Online (RO) indicates over 90 per cent of the townspeople surveyed are in favour of it.

True, the voices of discontent are there too, as witness the debate on the RO forum, yet these are the same sort of voices that King Nebuchadnezzar would have no doubt heard when he was planning to put the Hanging Gardens in downtown Babylon in 500-and-odd BC: “It will attract stinging bumble bees and slugs Your Majesty and the smell of all the flowers will have an unsettling effect upon the senses,” etc.

Bearing in mind the fuss surrounding the proposed extension to the local cemetery in Denehurst Park, the Mausoleum Temple of Halicarnassus would never have seen the light of day had it been left to these same voices.

Of course, there is much uncertainty over the project. We live in very uncertain economic times and nods and winks and half-promises cannot be cashed in at the bank.

Neither can we say exactly how many people will be attracted to visit and shop there or what businesses will spring up along its banks. Hopefully they will not consist mainly of overpriced cafes and wine-bars competing with each other to see who can pump out the loudest and latest rap music through external speakers.

Ultimately of course, it will be the people who will decide upon the success or otherwise of this project. We love to blame the council and the planners for all of the town’s ills but they can only do so much. If people don’t want to use the facilities then wild oxen and wagon ropes won’t make them come, let alone the Metrolink.

I for one am tentatively enthused by the project. It stimulates the Hardcastle imagination, has been a long time coming and there seems to be no Plan B.

People won’t come in droves to wonder at the new council offices with it large public square.

Neither will they come to visit the new shopping centre unless it offers something substantially better than we have at present. Another clone of the Wheatsheaf or Exchange will do nothing unless it offers something different and diverse that stimulates the senses as well as persuade people to part with their cash.

The opening of the river, if it is done right, should draw people in but to make them come back again and again it will have to be part of something bigger and better.

The councillors and the planners have worked hard on this over a period of years.

When the JCBs finally begin to rip open the covering, we should excuse them their period of pride and self-congratulation.

Whether or not the reopening will be a success will not be decided by them however but by the people who use it or not, as the case may be.

http://www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/2/news-headlines/71499/river-reopening-close-to-becoming-a-reality

http://www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=14274&title=support-the-rochdale-riviera