Colum: Rhyl's resources being wasted

Written by Colum McCormack.

Denbighshire County Council is again cutting services and increasing parking charges in Rhyl.  The fiasco over parking and loading bays goes on; this can't be the best way forward for the regeneration of our town. Summer's here and on Sunday mornings when thousands of people visit the car boot sale near Sainsbury's the stores in the adjacent shopping centre benefit greatly from the influx of customers who come for the car boot sale. In the meantime Rhyl Town Centre and its businesses are suffering from a lack of visitors while our Councillors do nothing, even though it has been brought to their attention that similar activities could benefit the town centre.
 
The Events Arena is very rarely used and would be an ideal venue for an outdoor market/car boot sale. There is ample parking, both in the underground car park and the unused and unkempt coach park on Crescent Road. It seems bad business not to put them to use. We have great resources here in Rhyl and if they were used properly to regenerate the town and stimulate business the benefits could be enormous. So why aren't they used? It is as if Rhyl is purposely being held back. More to the point DCC could make a huge amount of money from rents and parking charges. At a time when budgets are stretched surely the extra revenue would be useful. We have a wonderful Events Arena and hundreds of empty parking spaces so why not use them?
 
Just imagine what a different place Rhyl would be with two big events a week. This is the kind of regeneration we need and it is time our Councillors looked closely at their business plan for Rhyl - or do they even have one?