Peoples Republic of South Devon

Life, oh life, doo doot doo dooo

June 15th, 2006

“I’m afraid of the dark, ’specially when I’m in the park,” sang a trembling Des’ree a few years back.

But young Des would be phobia-free in Plymouth if the plans for a proposed Life Centre in Central Park came to fruition. There’d be very little ‘dark’, and, it seems, even less ‘park’.

“What’s a Life Centre anyhow,” you ask?

Well, it may sound like a scientologist’s wet dream but it’s actually what people in the 70s used to call ‘a leisure centre’.

Set in 220 acres, the £50 million Life Centre is described as ‘a multi-use complex that would reinvigorate the centre of Plymouth’.

Although still in its very early stages, with an application for planning permission in the distant future, the Evening Herald has seen fit to gather more than 10,000 signatures as part of its Let’s Build It campaign to ’show lottery commissioners the massive public support for the scheme’.

And who wouldn’t sign up for a new recording studio, dance centre, health clinic, Olympic-sized swimming pool, sculpture trail, library, youth centre, cinema and bowling alley?

In fact, it sounds like something the PRSD should be getting pretty excited about, non?

And yet, and yet. Our quibble comes with the news the facility would ‘replace the Mayflower Leisure Centre and build into unused space around Home Park’.

Unused space, you say. That would be the bits with trees and plants and stuff then.

Leisure bosses insist the project will only eat into one per cent of the park’s green space but shouldn’t the public know what actual areas will be lost before they sign anything?

After all, you can’t walk your dog up a bowling alley. Well, you could but you’d probably get arrested or something.

So why not sign the PRSD’s Careful Now petition. When we get 10,000 signatures we’ll present them to the never-popular warbler Des’ree, then run off really quickly.

Posted by Thin White Duke

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