They have decided on here.

Sorry but have you walked through Dewsbury town centre on a Saturday afternoon? I have and Wakefield is posh in comparison!
Dewsbury, not for me in any guise. I'm done after nearly 60 years.
How could we not have a plan b after all these years?
I just cannot see anything but despair. MC and CB will walk away and we're well and truly kna.....d

No wonder the NHS is struggling,multiculturism is so enriching our country.

We are Wakefield Trinity best thing thats happened to our club in years was reverting back to our proper name. If we weren't called Wakefield Trinity I wouldn't watch them.
We are the world famous Wakefield Trinity RLFC

My bad.
I knew there was Ossett Town and "another" club and it's Albion

They might even have been English

Sorry PB got to take you to task there, unfortunately a lot of people seem to get pleasure in talking Wakefield down but I'm not one of them, take away the Newmarket debacle and this is how I see it.
Yes the precinct up to the cathedral is a pig to look at, but.
We have the east Wakefield relief road.
We have the award winning Hepworth.
The Ings road out of town shops have had a great facelift.
Kirkgate station is a hundred times better than it was five years since.
The eyesores on the Kirkgate roundabout are being demolished.
The roundabout itself is getting filled in and the road layout changed hopefully for the better.
There are plans in the near future for phase three I believe it's called for the area from the roundabout on Kirkgate up to close to the Weatherspoons to be flattened and redeveloped.
The Ridings is getting a facelift on the bottom and top floors.
The Bull ring area like it or not looks miles better with the buildings getting spruced up and the fountains.
The awful carbuncle that is the market is going to be replaced by a cinema and food outlets.
We have the Trinity shopping centre which always seems full..
The bars/ restaurants in the town centre just go from strength to strength, there are now four or five bars that do a fair quality cocktail.
If you stand in he middle of the Unity car park you don't have to walk more than 30m to get to 8 quality bars.
Eating out is getting much better in the city centre, long gone are the days of kebabs/curries as the main dish.
My daughter used to live in Leeds, she's been back in Normy for three or four years and loves Wakey as a good cheap alternative to Leeds, not instead of but as well as. A few weeks since a dozen or so of her mixed group Leeds friends came into Wakey with my daughter, just for a change, they loved every minute of it, no trouble, not full of 16yr olds getting smashed and wanting to scrap, just a damn good night. One of the group mentioned to my daughter that they couldn't believe Wakey had such a nice vibe and far more upmarket bars than they expected.
Wakey isn't a third world country, OK it's not perfect but which city, large town is. It just needs people to see that the Wakey glass is half full and not half empty.
End of rant!

Excellent post. Imagine if we had built a stadium in Thornes back when it was mooted, I think that would have made the city centre an absolute cracking place along with everything else. Shame it never happened.

There used to be a football team called Ossett Trinitarians, you could have been thinking of that.

Ossett Town, another twist in the tale, were they not once supposed to be ground sharing with us up Queens Drive until they decided to stay put? Like the rest of the mooted schemes, it came to nothing.

Maybe so Jinjer, but the thing that strikes me most over the last 5 to 10 years as i drive into and also walk around Wakefield city centre on a daily basis is the proliferation of graffiti, tags, etc on BT service boxes,junction boxes at traffic lights and at sides of roads. Numerous commercial properties with businesses still using them now having tags/graffiti on their outside walls,even private housing has them on the brickwork in a few areas close to the town centre.
Hoardings,empty business properties are all awash with this ugly scarring and the council seems to completely ignore it. Along with a host of empty shops,garish brightly coloured shop fronts to a lot of open business premises in the city centre the first impressions are not at all good.
Take Trinity Walk out of the equation and i wouldn't go near Wakefield at all, and i have lived all of my 68 years in the city and enjoyed many,many a good times in the city in the not too recent past, it all adds up to general run down third world feel about it. If we lose our only top class professional sports team, then i'm off to spend what time i have left in warmer climes. Just my own personal thoughts, end of rant.

Nah, one thing you can rely on with snowie, if he says they were Europeans they will have been, he can spot one a mile off

Most towns of our size are going through the same problems. Shopping habits are changing with the growth in online shopping. Less and less people are going into a town for their main shopping and this has made many smaller businesses unviable. No council has found a magic solution. Cafes, bars and restaurants do seem to survive as towns become more of a social centre rather than a shopping centre. Wakefield's doing a little better than average but, sure, could do more. There are plans but money is often the problem.

Surely by definitions, English is European? Or has the British isle managed to migrate off the European tectonic plate on to another continent?

Completely agree.
I've been a critic of the Council, especially letting the Kirkgate area get so run down for so many years. But the Council have finally pulled their finger out & are getting that whole area sorted. Imo once the Kirkgate area has been sorted out and redeveloped, it will do for Wakefield what the Ridings did in the 80's & what Trinity Walk did in the 2000's. It's really the only area of the City people can have a go at, that hasn't been improved for the better the last 10/15 years.

Also imo some people look back at Wakefield of the past with Rose Tinted Glasses. The City has always had graffiti and had drunken fools around. People must remember how crazy town was when all the Clubs emptied at 2am and all of Westgate was full of Police because there was that much trouble. Far different nowadays, due to CCTV and Clubs etc having different closing times.

I lived in the city centre between 2008 and Christmas last year. In those first couple of years post financial crash there was a massive decline to the point of the city centre becoming a ghost town. In the last few years the city has really started to pick itself up again and there have been some huge improvements; notably the two railway stations, Trinity Walk, Merchant's Gate, Sun Lane Leisure, Unity Works, the increasing number of specialist beer bars, cocktail bars, restaurants, cafes.

Kirkgate is still a dump but the regeneration has started and future plans look like they'll improve it no end.

The real major problem the city centre faces is one faced by most cities and towns and there isn't much you can do about it - people are increasingly shopping online, it's convenient and a whole lot cheaper. Why venture into town when it's throwing it down when you can order online and have it delivered without even getting out of bed? Online giants like Amazon, ebay and Google are taking over. Personally, I like to get out and shop the old fashioned way, but for every one of me there must be a thousand who shop online. It's a huge problem to be solved and the visionary who puts forward a radical idea to completely transform the function of city centres would go down in history.

Well said Jinjer. Visit Canterbury regularly, and even there one comes across drunks etc. Wakefield nowhere near as bad as many towns and cities. I am 66 and agree restaurant and bar scene has improved enormously.

Im with you on this one Jinjer - Kirkgate and that bottom end of the precinct is an armpit but the rest of Wakey is on the rise.

I never used to go out in Wakefield because it was pretty much one enormous dive - no food that wasnt a pizza or kebab, pubs and clubs that you wiped your feet on the way out of, drunken louts carrying on in the streets etc.

Now though the area round the theatre is full of great drinking places, we have a quality live music venue and some of the best (and cheapest) restaurants I've been to anywhere. Even the Strafford has had a facelift!

Very pleased with the direction of travel in that regard.

Having read some of the posts on here, I do agree on some of the points raised by Prince Buster, but also agree on some of the points raised by Jinger, regarding re generation of the city centre.

There is a lot of empty and to let signs around that do nothing for the profile, but at the same time, some of the places to eat and drink are going more upmarket.

If we could clean some of those areas up that are mentioned, plus look at litter, could look a much better place.

Someone else also mentioned moving to sunnier and warmer climates. We lived in Malta for just short of 4 years, and it was a great lifestyle, and anyone wishing to do that, I would highly recommend it. Sitting in the local square on Christmas Eve, in shorts and tshirt, having a beer, or walking out of your office overlooking the Med or Valetta skyline was a great feeling.

Bins emptied every day and no council tax fees. When needed the healthcare was also first class.

Parents thought we were totally mad in coming back, but we did. Only really missed family and the North Stand

I respect what jinjer says, we go back a far way and probably have different views. I also agree with jinjers points but for every good point there is a bad point (Old ABC Cinema etc).

However I also remember the place when it was a a terrific vibrant City with Tiffs and pubs like the mitre. I suppose those days are long gone and will never return. However I still think Wakey is a shadow of its former self.

I grew up in South East London, Wakefield town centre might not be Knightsbridge but it isn't Peckham Rye or Catford either. It is certainly no worse than comparable sized city centres. Some good new shops popped up and making a go of things - Wah Wah records enough to get me in to town most weeks. Don't drink anymore but seems to be a great pub scene and plenty of live music on. People don't like change, no keen on it myself but what has changed isn't coming back.

As for Trinity - not going anywhere and not changing name. Worse case scenario play at Dewsbury or Fev as a Championship team for the next few years. Refuse to believe the new ground is dead, think the council's hand will now be forced. Oi Box - just underwrite a loan and lets get the thing built.

You can chuck in the Wakefield One development with the new library and museum, the imporvements to the civic quarter, new rail and bus stations in recent times along with the hospital and college upgrades and the current extension to the theatre royal. The introduction of the Wakefield BID to improve the look of the place will be a major benefit to the appearance of the place as well, they have just appointed their first CEO and things will start to be notice shortly. Once Kirkgate is done the old place will be looking ok, sadly empty shops is just a sign of modern times and the online shopping as has been mentioned.

Couldn't remember the name of Wakefield one till you mentioned it, and couldn't be d finishing my rant to find it!


Plus to add to my rant we also have for the less able a FREE bus that does off the top of my head.
Kirkgate station> The Hepworth>all the stops on Ings road>round Cineworld>west gate>Westgate station>through town to the bus station.

Who knows what goes on in snowie's world