WILL Lithgow's CBD ever get back to what passes for dignified normality?
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Our long suffering shopkeepers are just about tearing their hair out in this age of continual disruption.
The grievances are justified and reached a high point when the illogically titled revitalisation program did its best to kill Lithgow' s Main Street.
When it was done and dusted our greenery had disappeared and our 'love affair' with charmless concrete began.
But since then there's been footpaths and roads torn up for the NBN and pipe work and crumbling footpath and road fill that in some cases has had 'temporary' status for more than two years.
Parking spaces have disappeared, barricades are all over the place, awning replacement goes on and on an on, grubby footpaths, a pestilence of pigeons and then the crowning glory, a succession of burst water mains in the CBD and all over town that would be comical if it wasn't so serious.
Where and when will it all end?
Footnote: Beware the temporary fill where water mains have erupted through roadways. Some of them could justify being sponsored by the tyre companies, particularly a ripper in Martini Parade in recent days.
The brighter side
IT'S not all bad news for the CBD though. The Main Street shopping strip has been given a boost with two new shops. Sportspower has relocated from the Valley Plaza to a former short lived fast food store at the lower end of Main Street, following the example of the Telstra Shop who relocated across the street last year. And further up town a new locksmith and security device firm has moved in to the former Miranne Jewllery site. Promising signs indeed.
Popular vote
OUR Member for Bathurst Paul Toole is back in business after the weekend election and the statistics tell us it will be a generally popular result locally. Paul topped the primary vote in every polling booth in the Lithgow Local Government area, including some areas that in a past life would have been dedicated ALP strongholds. Now to see what the new term of government will bring.
Unsightly
LITHGOW'S eyesore of the week must surely be the two old mattresses that were dumped on the footpath quite some time back. It surely must be time someone took responsibility for getting rid o what is not a pretty sight.
Floodgates
A lot of people will be justifiably hopeful that community interests are taken into account when deciding on the bid to dump Sydney construction waste in an old quarry at Bell. There would be no discernible benefit for anyone in the Lithgow or Blue Mountains LGA but the approval would likely open the floodgates for more dumping that has already been under discussion.
