For over a year, the corner building on West St Helen Street has been supported by scaffolding and surrounded by sandbags after its side wall became unstable. This September, the old unsafe wall was finally demolished.
This October, work began to rebuild it. A new structure is taking shape — breeze blocks for the inside wall and a brick frontage to match the rest of the building.
It’s good to see such steady progress after such a long wait. Over the years, quite a few long-standing issues in central Abingdon, highlighted here and elsewhere, have now been tackled. One exception is the Upper Reaches Hotel.
The useless multi-story car park problem has not been solved. I was told that it would be too costly to fix. It has been left as a monument to the run down areas in Abingdon. The Upper Reaches Hotel is not going to be solved. I have been told that the owners are holding out so that they can get planning permission to bulldoze it down and build expensive flats. In my opinion there is a wasted opportunity to replace the rotted monk on the Tesco roundabout with a nice display or something similar.