Sunday, October 29

Danger Mall



Back in June I wrote about the disgrace of Barrow's Mall, slap bang on one of the most prominent positions in the town centre this rotting seventies edifice continues to embarrass us to visitors to the Victorian heart of town. Nothing has been done with it and now it threatens the very lives and limbs of passersby. Over the weekend a large slab of concrete weighing many hundreds of pounds fell off this dangerous building and landed on the footpath right next to a well used bus stop. This time no one was killed or injured thankfully, but how many more of these huge lumps are ready to fall off onto folk who are walking past? The building they tell me is owned by an absentee landlord who has been making hollow promises for years to improve it.
The building next door which was built at the same time was found to be riddled with lethal asbestos and I wonder how much of this will now be exposed by this deterioration. Now is the time to send in surveyor's to determine just how dangerous this building is, and then have it demolished sending the bill to the owner. I don't think we can afford to take any chances like the one's taken with the adjoining Forum 28 which led to the death of seven people from legionaires disease.

2 comments:

Joe said...

It's a disgrace Bob. I used to wonder what the tourists thought when they came off their cruise ships and saw that monstrosity. Your comparison with Forum 28 is a good one, strikes me as another example of the council doing nothing until there's a disaster then they'll blame someone else. Barrow is a wonderful town but the councillors!

Unknown said...

we had something like that in manchester before the IRA decided to blow the city to smitherines.

sad to say it but maybe that bomb was the best thing that ever happened to us.