STALLHOLDERS expect to trigger a full council debate on the future of Chester’s market hall after collecting 1,600 signatures.
Friends of Chester Market opposes council plans to relocate the market to a new £8m building on Frodsham Street car park as part of changes brought about by the ING-backed Northgate Development.
Now a 1,600-strong petition has been handed into the council to keep the market in a central location by the town hall, which automatically triggers a council debate after passing the 1,500 threshold.
Chairman Vic Button disputes council leader Mike Jones’s assertion most market traders want ‘a radical solution’ to the market’s declining fortunes.
He said: “The council are intent on relocating the market so they can sell the land that it is on to ING, so selling off the silver! This is so that the land can then be redeveloped with more unneeded, mundane shops and apartments.
“To this aim, the council says that the market is in a poor state and is losing money and must go.
“But the market is only losing money because the council has badly neglected it – leaky roof for more than 15 years, poor town signs, new traders turned away – so failing to rent out stalls, no attempt to improve people flow and with too many market employees, leading to a very large wage bill.”
Mr Button said the proposed Frodsham Street car park site, ‘next to the pigeon coop and outside the city walls’, was fraught with problems. He and others claim the area is designated as public open space and the building would be ‘illegally pitched’.
