SLIDESHOW: Bargates bulldozers rev their engines

DEMOLITION crews have finally moved in to bulldoze Burton’s most notorious eyesore — after the last obstacle to the site’s redevelopment was removed.

Bargates: the end

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Experts have begun the 12-week process of flattening the former Bargates shopping centre, off High Street, bringing to an end eight years of uncertainty over its fate.

The bulldozers were given the goahead to move in after supermarket giant Tesco, which owns the site, settled a legal wrangle with brewer Molson Coors over access to its planned new superstore in Hawkins Lane.

That means Tesco has finally been able to complete its £3.57 million sale of Bargates to East Staffordshire Borough Council after almost three years of protracted negotiations.

Surveying the crumbling 1960s relic as workmen from demolition firm Cawarden moved in yesterday, council leader Richard Grosvenor said he was ‘thrilled and excited’ his authority could now press on with ambitious redevelopment plans.

He told the Mail: “It’s been frustrating for all of us because we wanted to see progress but we’ve always known what we wanted to achieve. It’s been a long time coming and now we just want to crack on with it.

“People in Burton will feel a sense of relief that it’s being pulled down and we can finally improve what is a very prominent site in the town.”

The deal with Tesco also heralds progress for its new Hawkins Lane store, work on which is now expected to begin at the end of this year for a planned 2013 opening.

David Burkey, Tesco development executive, said: “We’re very aware of what a big issue this is for the people of Burton and I’d like to thank the council for working with us to bring this to a conclusion.”

Demolition crews will begin by completing an asbestos survey and stripping the interior fittings, timber and metalwork, along with debris accumulated since the last business moved out four years ago.

They expect to begin pulling down the building’s brick and concrete shell within six weeks and to have the site levelled in 12 weeks.

The council hopes to employ the land for public recreational use until a developer can be found to progress plans for shops, cafes, homes and offices on the site and the neighbouring councilowned riverside car park.

THE LAST DAYS OF AN UNLOVED ICON

BLACKENED by fire, stripped bare by thieves and trashed by vandals — Bargates needs putting out of its misery.

The shadowy interior of its once-thriving bowling alley looks, as the saying goes, ‘like a bomb’s hit it’, and while the unforgiving glare of the photographer’s flash highlights the shattered glass, charred concrete and debris strewn all around, some things the lens doesn’t capture.

Like the dark, oppressive gloom, relieved only by shafts of pale winter light filtering through a handful of slit-like windows, the musty, burnt smell and the disturbingly squishy feeling of unidentified gunk underfoot.

Outside, the courtyard envisaged by its creators as a bright, airy space for shoppers of the future to relax, stroll and enjoy a coffee is an overgrown wasteland cut in half, Berlin Wall-style, by the wooden fence erected to keep out the trespassers.

Elsewhere, a shattered glass mirror welcomes curry-lovers to the Manzil Tandoori, four years after it moved out, while a poster in the shattered window of Tony’s Delights, once a haven for post-pub grub, advertises a ‘New Year’s Eve drum ‘n’ bass night’ at a club which no longer exists.

The developers who created this monstrosity dreamed of a clean, bright future where shoppers would meander happily through traffic-free precincts before splashing their new-found disposable income to a backdrop of strip-lighting and canned music.

Instead, they created a monster and spurned a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of utilising Burton’s most neglected asset, the River Trent, whose shimmering waters were left overlooked by a windowless brick wall and a council-run car park.

For that reason, few, if any, will weep when the bulldozers do their worst and condemn this unloved and unlovely icon of misguided 1960s planning to the history books.