Alan Bell outlines his vision of the future for Ardrossan

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In my last article, I highlighted my concerns that the car park area at the beginning of Ardrossan promenade, at the corner of Princes Street and Arran Place, has now been designated a ‘no parking’ area.

The council plans to convert this parking area into a shared path, where cyclists can cycle between pedestrians along the entire promenade, despite there already being a cycle lane running on the length of the road adjacent to the promenade.

As I’ve said before, taking cyclists off roadside lanes onto pavements is obviously an accident waiting to happen.

Anyway, it reminded me of a meeting I attended some eight or nine years ago where I detailed my vision of the Ardrossan beach and promenade area. The meeting was a locality funding meeting attended by many local councillors, officials and residents of the Three Towns.

As a newcomer at the time, I made a comparison between Ardrossan and Largs. Largs is really, really busy during the Summer months, especially with families. It’s difficult to park anywhere. But what has Largs got going for it? It doesn’t really have a beach, as the beach area is covered in pebbles and stones, not sand.

Ardrossan, on the other hand, has a fantastic sandy beach area. It’s the number one reason for visiting Ardrossan, ideal for families wanting a day out at the seaside. So why is Ardrossan beach not reaching its full potential?

In my opinion, there’s nothing to keep families in Ardrossan. Largs caters for the families on their promenade. There are plenty of toilets, food outlets, parking at various points along the promenade area, and small carnival-type rides to entertain the children. Ardrossan doesn’t have any of this.

My vision for Ardrossan was for it to, first of all, have plenty of parking.

Back in 2015/16, there was indeed plenty of parking on Ardrossan promenade. There was a car park area at either end of the grass and you could also park your car on the grass itself.

But now, there will only be Ardrossan South Beach Car Park at one end of the grass with the future of parking on the grass itself, also in doubt.

Then there has to be food outlets; we now have a new, hugely anticipated, café getting built on the promenade which the Ardrossan Community Development Trust (not the council) have to be thanked for.

But with hundreds of people visiting the beach during the summer, in my opinion, we need to also have some pop-up food outlets – the same as in Largs.

So, if the café is selling sandwiches and cakes, you could have a pop-up fish and chips hut, a pop-up burger and hotdog hut, and a pop-up hot doughnut hut, for instance. This will give families and visitors plenty of choice.

Or how about combining this with some farmers market stalls to encourage visitors to the promenade?

There also has to be adequate toilet facilities. I have mentioned in previous articles how ludicrous it was to have taken away the existing, large toilet block and in its place, have only three toilets in the new café to cater for the hundreds of beach visitors.

Utter madness, if you ask me – and you can only imagine the state the toilets will be in with that volume of people using them on a daily basis. Yuck!

Finally, my vision from almost a decade ago, was to have water sports on the beach.

Give visitors the chance to rent out a kayak or paddleboard (obviously, cordon off the water area they will be used in with buoys, if necessary).

Encourage the surfers and windsurfers who travel to Ardrossan beach to set up a ‘Come and Try’ point to inspire people to take up the sport/hobby. Maybe even have a pop-up stall on the sand selling buckets, spades and the like plus smaller ‘carnival-type’ rides for little kids, similar to those near Oscars at the Saltcoats end of the promenade.

All of these ideas, in my opinion, are needed to make Ardrossan beach and promenade thrive.

And yet we seem to be in a half-hearted, lack of vision, position; Let’s build a café but take away the toilets. We want more people to visit but let’s reduce the number of parking areas. And let’s not encourage visitors to stay with activities and a selection of food outlets to cater for them all and keep their kids happy

It’s a wasted opportunity.

So apart from keeping the cyclists happy and the odd mural here and there, my question is this - what exactly is the new Ardrossan Regeneration Project planning to achieve? How will the project encourage visitors to the beach and promenade?