Pickings for all at the Rendezvous site

News was quietly released last week, concerning the future development of the Rendezvous site, which in case you're unfamiliar is the large chunk of land, on Margate's seafront, between Margate Harbour and the Winter Gardens just beyond the lifeboat station.

As we all know, nothing can happen in local government, without the aid of consultants, sale and development of a parcel of land is no exception, Rodger Gogh KCC Cabinet member has announced that the county's property consultants Donaldson's have a shortlisted four developers.

Now I will not bore you too much with the details, suffice it to say, rather vague and ambiguous details are available from Kent council's website, if you wish to click here.

There are of course the usual stock phrases, " things are really starting to happen" Sandy Ezekiel, " We are extremely pleased to be able to select a shortlist of developers of this calibre for this key mixed - use regeneration opportunity" Duncan Thomas for property consultant Donaldson's, all very informative stuff and in no way meaningless waffle.

Thanet Council, gave this land two Kent County council, so don't forget that effectively, this land belongs to the people of Thanet. So a few of things that need asking, assuming this land will eventually be sold to a commercial developer, what will happen to the money, secondly why is Thanet Council not competent enough to handle the sale of what is or was a local asset.

What should really worry us all, is what happens to the proceeds from the sale of this land, since Kent County council's handling of a previous transactions seems a tad odd, when they sold the West Malling airfield site proceeds rather than being returned to the taxpayer, were sidetracked into something called a regeneration fund, which according to top nobs meant this money was no longer the taxpayers (part of which I believe was squandered on badly thought out promotional activities in America this summer). See previous posting re Manston debacle.

Of course if you or I had land to sell, we would probably check out the competence and commission rates of appropriate property agents, clearly nothing is as simple in the world of local government and certainly Sandy Ezekiel's Thanet District council once again fails to show any leadership in this matter.

I would like to thank David one of my readers for drawing this to my attention. One final word, why is this site, larger than the one given to the Turner contemporary! I don't suppose a money has anything to do with it.