Lack of Public Investment in the Gay Village
2007
When asked how he viewed the social scene in Birmingham today he
replied that he had been very hopeful in the late 1990s
because a gay village was emerging and because of what was "almost an
over-supply - fourteen or fifteen gay bars at one point and it was too
many really."
What he felt had gone wrong with the lower end of Hurst Street i.e. the gay village area was that there was no investment by the public authorities in terms on the street lighting, the paving, the general scruffy ambience.
He found this odd in the light of the private money that had gone into Hurst Street; he felt that the public authorities should have been aware of it as an area to be cultivated. He compared this to a similar situation in Manchester after a recession in the eighties when the city centre including the area that has become the gay village was regenerated.
Money was put into paving, street lights and pedestrianisation over a two year period. He felt that even now that is not happening in Birmingham compared to Manchester, Brighton and London and that therefore Birmingham will not be in the national spotlight for its gay scene.
Contributed by: Mike