The Vicar writes...
 July 2010
Dear Friends,
Last month ambitious plans were unveiled for a £38 million redevelopment of Mumbles Pier. If they are approved then the headland will be completely transformed by the building of a 150 bed hotel, restaurants, boardwalks, shops and apartments. The scheme could bring an estimated £18 million a year into the local economy and create over two hundred permanent jobs. It will be the biggest ever investment in the tourist industry in Mumbles.
Part of the redevelopment will be the long awaited building of a modern state of the art Lifeboat House at the end of the pier. This will be needed for the new ‘Tamar’ class all weather boat which the lifeboat community is busily fundraising for. The vessel should arrive before the redevelopment, once we have raised £150,000 locally as our share of the millions it is likely to cost.
I hope, like many I’ve spoken to recently, that the project will not detract from our spectacular headland. It is, after all, the most dramatic gateway into the outstanding natural beauty of the Gower peninsula.
However, the initial plans appear to show a large scale project. Local groups, such as the Mumbles Development Trust and the Gower Society, have already expressed their concern about the possible ‘overdevelopment’ of the site. They have called for the height and size of the buildings to be sensitively scaled into the limestone cliffs.
Though I too would echo this I nonetheless hope that our community will be given the much needed investment it so badly needs. If our experience is anything to go by, as a church seeking to restore a historic building, it’s likely that the architects will have to go back to the drawing board several times before planning permission is finally given.
Dylan Thomas, a famous son of this city, once described Swansea as an ‘ugly lovely town’. In his day the place was one of stark contrasts, with the heavily industrialised valley to the east and the leafy suburbs and Gower to the west. Much has, of course, changed since Dylan’s day. The iron and copper works have gone and where there was once nothing but industrial dereliction there are now large swathes of urban forests.
Mumbles truly is a lovely part of the city. It has sometimes been described as the ‘jewel in the crown of Swansea.’ Yet, for many years parts of the village and foreshore have shown signs of neglect and under investment. Take a stroll along the promenade, look around the diary car park or Oystermouth Square and you will see a resort in need of quite a ‘makeover’.
Over the last few decades tourism has changed greatly in Mumbles. A number of our former seaside hotels have been converted or rebuilt into ‘luxury apartments’. We’ve lost one of our two caravan sites to a housing development. Visitors now tend to come for the day, or for an hour or so, rather than for a week’s holiday. From June to September traffic gridlock sets in on the Mumbles Road as people come in their tens of thousands to stroll along the prom, to enjoy a meal at one of our fine restaurants, have a Joe’s ice-cream, a coffee at Verdi’s, or a go on the slot machines at the pier.
There’s also been quite a change in our ministry to those who visit our Churches. We still get a few holidaymakers worshipping with us on Sundays, and it is always good to welcome them. But the vast majority of visitors are day-trippers who arrive after our morning services, and we’ve had to look at new ways of reaching out to them as a Church. Keeping the building open and the concerts, events and exhibitions we hold all help to bring people in. We very much hope that when they come they are touched by the beauty of the place and by all that it stands for. This is part of what we have called our ‘ministry of welcome’ as a parish and we need to look at ways of developing this work further.
The local tourist industry will always need to look at new ways of attracting visitors to Mumbles. A suitable and sympathetic development at the pier will help to breathe some new life into the resort. It will encourage visitors to experience the joy of Mumbles for several days rather than just for a few hours. This can only be a good thing for the community and its churches!
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