Forum topic: Putting a plaza in place

Anyone know if there is any public seating in this public place? According to the Council, it was the local cafe that refused to allow the £35k parklet here as if would ruin their business which is why I’m keen to know if again they have refused to accept any public seating here?

Hogwash. Do we have some Council minutes etc to support that? As that's clearly a smokescreen to pretend the Devonshire parklet was not cancelled and moved to Southgate because of a noisy, vociferous and occasionally abusive (typical) campaign emanating from the anti LTN cohort.

As I understand the light green seating shared by the cafes is Council-funded. The mobile Parklet was always meant to be moved around the borough. With the confirmation of the wonderful low traffic neighbourhood the Council decided to create a permanent square. The good news is we get two parklets in the borough and the cafes are delighted with the extra custom. Everyone wins

Thank you. But how are people to know they can sit there? Last week, tables in the raised platform area had little vase or salt/pepper on the tables, ie indicating they belonged to the cafe so no indication it was public space. Perhaps some public notices letting people know seating is free would help. So we can sit while cafes are open and after that, say, a nice summer’s evening, is the public space open to us then to sit or the chairs will be taken away? Why is seating in this public space in the gift of two cafes? How do the other cafes in the area feel about that I wonder.

It is costing £100,000 which as well as the £35,000 spent on the rejected parklet, is a lot of money.

Ann, where's your evidence for this claim? If you can't back it up, then please publicly state that you can't instead of leaving an inaccuracy uncorrected. Why on earth would having an area safe for pedestrians ruin a business, especially a cafe?

My understanding is that local businesses were very taken by the one-day parklet experiment in 2018 and were keen on the idea of something permanent.

Enfield Council’s email to me 26 Oct 21 extract below. Do you remember July last yr you announced parklet was coming but then suddenly it was installed in Southgate. It seems Olive Garden thought it would interfere with business -and wanted time for its outside space to evolve. How is this news to you guys though? Is what the Council sent me not the ‘real’ story? Very confused now.

That's interesting, I was unaware of that, and I don't know why the council couldn't have made that more widely available. So you've taken that perfectly reasonable point made by cafe and council (and I assume that the cafe has to pay the council for a table licence) and totally distorted it to fit your agenda:

There is absolutely no evidence there to back up your claim that "the local cafe refused to allow the parklet" or that they said "it would ruin their business". Do you have any evidence? If not, please apologise for misleading people.

Perhaps you could ask Darren Edgar to do the same re his posts too before coming so quickly back to me. It seems odd that those so closely involved seemed to know nothing about the official explanation the Council gave me. Perhaps PG Community could ask the Council what happened to the consultation it supposedly did with businesses and the survey it ran last year for the community as it seems quite late in the day to withdraw the parklet. Following the Council's letter to me, it is my belief that the cafe owner must not have wanted the parklet in place as the owner wanted their business to evolve. Which begs the question why could the two not happen alongside each other -- remember it was intended as a trial and could be moved around, etc? The implication from the wording of the Council letter that the cafe owner must have felt that having a public seating area beside it would somehow adversely affect its business. If the owner felt it would enhance the business, then there would be no need to mention it. and the parklet would have gone ahead. The only explanation the Council letter provides for its sudden cancellation of the parklet installation is that it was in discussions with the cafe owner. So I apologise for presenting as fact what is my opinion based on my reading of the Council letter. I look forward to a response to my earlier post about the seating and how it will be clear a. that it is public and free to use and b. what happens when the cafes are closed. Will any additional seating be provided?