LAST Saturday (Sept 7th) saw a one-off outdoor concert take place at Justice Lane in Frome town centre – when the Keep Frome Local group staged an event titled “Pop-Up Town Square”.
Intended to highlight the town’s lack of public space and encourage discussion of the new plans for the Saxonvale site announced last week, the afternoon featured performances from local musicians The Street Bandits, Magic Tractor and Leander Morales.
While they played to an appreciative audience, KFL volunteers talked to passers-by about the issues currently facing the town: new development, a spate of plans for new supermarkets and chain convenience stores that could take Frome’s total number of such outlets to twelve, and the importance of championing local shops, businesses and traders.
Last week, in addition to the Bristol-based developers Terramond stating that they now have firm plans for building houses on Saxonvale, Frontier Estates announced a new scheme for their portion of the site, which they say will include a “medium-sized” supermarket, as well as other new shops and a “public square”.
“We’d been planning the Pop Up Town Square event for a few months,” said KFL spokesman Luke Wilde. “But Frontier and Terramond’s announcements coincided perfectly with it. On the face of it, we welcome Frontier’s plan for a smaller supermarket than was once planned for Saxonvale, and new public space, but we await further details, not least about what a ‘public square’ actually entails. What Saturday proved was that the town desperately needs somewhere to congregate and hold events like this one.”
To discuss these and other issues, KFL is hosting an open public meeting at the Cheese and Grain on Wednesday September 25th between 7.30 and 9pm, where people of all views will be welcome. “We’re inviting Frontier Estates and Terramond to take part,” said Wilde, “and it would be great to see them there.”