Letter: A 7-point plan to revitalise the K Village (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Letter: A 7-point plan to revitalise the K Village

5:27pm Thursday 14th March 2013 in Opinion

K Village developers who demolished the hotch potch of old factory buildings and replaced them with a splendid appearing new structure (at least from the outside), should have taken note of why it was so popular to visitors and thought about copying or improving some or all of its internal features and possibly adding more.

Several small stall holders were allowed, at a reasonable rent, to have a small cart or side table along the main corridor, which created a homely atmosphere before you even entered any of the various shops. A friend of mine used to regularly display his wares but told me that when applying for a permit for a have a stall in the new K Village, he was appalled at the massive increase in charges.

A principal feature of the original layout was a large, customer-friendly restaurant providing very reasonably priced drinks, snacks and meals to cope with the large number of coaches, which came on a regular basis.

There was free parking; adjacent parking for coaches; convenient toilets and an even, acceptable temperature throughout the premises.

My suggestions for a return to normal trading are:

1. Turn two or more outlets into a decent-sized restaurant.

2. Create an internal entrance to Costa so customers can keep dry on a rainy day.

3. Make the first half hour of parking free, so returning an item to a store does not cost you an hour’s parking - and encourage outlets to reimburse parking fees in purchases.

4. Use one of the outlets to create a central toilet to replace the present toilet, which is visited by a long trek along a corridor.

5. Improve the angle of approach to the parking exit meter so as not to be on such an awkward curve, which causes a lot of problems for drivers.

6. Encourage purchase or letting of the apartments over the complex by some shopping or other discount arrangement.

And, possibly the most important:

7. Enclose the drafty corridor using doors of some sort to avoid the cold wind that often blows through from end to end and forces the outlets to have oppressive temperatures to combat this.

I would love to see K Village come back to life. I was looking forward to the new complex, only to be so disappointed with the result.

I do hope the administrators or future owners of K Village take my comments in the right spirit. I would hate the complex to become a truly ‘White Elephant’.

William Hanes, Kendal