Wreck and Ruin - or Renaissance?
In the post-war decades all British seaside resorts struggled
to find a new role as the British increasingly went on foreign holidays,
especially to Spain. The West Pier and the Palace Pier (now Brighton Pier)
declined along with the rest of Brighton's seafront. In the 1970s its owners
could only think of demolishing large bits of the pier in a desperate attempt
to achieve some sort of commercial viability. This in turn brought out
the massed ranks (at any rate a 5000-signature petition) of conservationists
whose first victory was to have the pier officially declared a listed building.
That sealed its fate. There were no plans to hand that could achieve financial
viability. The company went bust, and the pier closed. The pier had become
a part of the not-quite-yet-born heritage industry, but even so it still
had no obvious route to financial viability.
In the early 80s the pier became the property and responsibility of the West Pier Trust, a charitable trust dedicated to rebuilding the pier and returning it to its former glory. It has had offers of government funding support on and off ever since 1985 and since 1988 various private developers have put forward schemes.
The big problem is the same problem: to decide what role the rebuilt pier would play in the city that would make it financially viable. It's one thing to rebuild the pier but to do what? What would be its source of future income?
Any scheme will need some size of foreshore 'supporting development', that is, commercial property that can generate an income additional to whatever revenue-raising is possible on the pier itself. Its 'rival', Brighton Pier, has a solution - see below - but there's no point restoring the West Pier simply in order to have another Brighton Pier.
And what of the size of the supporting development on the lower promenade? Will it amount to another shopping mall? Many think so, and hence opposition has grown. One developer wanted 112,000 sq feet of foreshore development.
Tragically, in addition, in the winter of 2002/3 the pier sustained significant storm damage, and then in 2003 two arson attacks (crimes still unsolved) destroyed it.