A new design guide has been published to help set the standard for commercial property in Newport and Ryde, ensuring the frontage of shops, pubs and other buildings enhances the conservation area.
Newport and Ryde Commercial Frontages Design Guide is a guide for shopkeepers, building owners, designers, planners, councillors, and anyone else involved in caring for shops and other commercial buildings in Ryde and Newport town centres. It will help protect and enhance historic features that contribute to the character of our town centres, preserving our heritage for future generations.
The guide also looks to the future and gives guidance on adapting buildings to new uses while ensuring they still make a positive contribution to the street scene. It is designed to be accessible to everyone while also useful to building design professionals.
Martin Gibson, Newport High Street Heritage Action Zone Project Manager, explains:
“Regeneration of our High Streets in Newport and Ryde is crucial for their future and our new Design Guide will play a key role in helping to keep them vibrant and relevant.
“The design guide will help building owners and their advisors to improve shopfronts and other commercial frontages, so they enhance the conservation area and create streets that look great.
“We want to ensure Newport is an attractive place people want to visit whether for shopping or catching up with friends over a coffee – and the Design Guide will help to make the most of what Newport has to offer.”
There’s been much talk about the future for high streets and how important the look of our town centre streets is to the future success of our towns. The Design Guide shows how we can build on the history of our important commercial centres and make them enticing and relevant for future generations to enjoy.
Sally Thompson, Ryde High Street Heritage Action Zone Project Manager, explains what the Design Guide will mean for Ryde:
“The Design Guide is a significant project for Ryde High Street Heritage Action Zone because it is a blueprint for how Ryde town centre can be improved for future generations to enjoy.
“By making the shop fronts as attractive as possible, we can help to keep our High Street vibrant and attract more independent shops. We want the High Street to be a place that people choose to spend time there, not just pop-in and leave.”
The guide is easy to access, with topline general information and more technical advice for architects and crafts people to follow. An interactive web version, or a downloadable PDF, can be found at https://iwdesignguide.uk/.
So shop keepers spend more money that they don’t have? Good plan
I suggested this to a councillor in Cowes to ASK landlords to do this as it’s their property their investment but I was basically told it was a silly idea.
Shopping here is dead and will remain that way in small towns.
Flatten these old buildings and turn the town into a park.
What, no shops at all, in the great and historical CITY of Newport ?
Not even a post office ?
( Bring Back Woolworths, that’s what I say ).
it’s not a city… it’s a dump !!
Its a guide and therefore has no legal weight. Will be completely ignored and disappear without trace by the end of the year…….
IW Council is fiddling while Rome burns. This “guide” fails to address the crucial question: why would a retailer want to move into Newport or Ryde?
It’s what’s on the inside that counts. Or so I’ve been told many times.
Free one hour parking would help the shops.
Yet another excellent idea from the Council that no doubt has and will cost a fortune, and guess who’s money it is …. ours.
Wonders what next?
A spare floating bridge in case FB6 breaks down again repeatedly?
The problem in iow isn’t the above article, the problem is the extreme negativity to anything and everything by a small coterie of people, with minimal intelligence and even less vision, that spends all their waking hours criticising people who strive to drag the island kicking and screaming into the 21st century – do everyone a favour and get a life! and incidentally I am always shocked that Isle of wighters describe Ryde and Newport as dumps; are you truly unaware of what constitutes a dump to most sane people, if you were parachuted into any number of areas on the mainland, imagine you would be sucking your thumb and crying for mummy..
Fur coat no knickers
How is this going to apply to the scruffy closed shops in our high streets, hitting shop owner with extortionate business rates whilst the endless charity shops pay nothing.
You can design as much as you like, at the end of the day there will be barriers such as listed buildings and cost’s involved and whose going to pay for it all in the present climate. As for bringing people back into town make parking easier and far far cheaper even not pay at all that way either shoppers or visitors will hopefully stay longer and spend more… Simples