| |
Say no to sex shops
• AS a long-standing resident of Clerkenwell and someone new to King’s Cross – the golden regeneration area – I can’t believe that a sex establishment licence application is being considered for 8 Caledonian Road.
We already have a sex video shop, a sex bookshop and a strip joint (an old pub with blacked-out windows) within a 15-metre radius, which attract unsavoury characters to the entrance of the cul-de-sac that is Omega Place.
These three alone are within 15 metres of our entrance gate, as is number 8. Clearly, sex establishments bring in good business revenue for the council, but as it has encouraged upmarket development to the area it would be devaluing the new developments it has attracted by encouraging such a glut of sex establishments in a residential area where permission has been granted to build apartments.
We seem to be being dragged back to the days when the area was a red-light district, with prostitutes and drug dealers on every corner.
Do we want that? I for one don’t and I am sure I speak for the residents of the new Regent’s Quarter.
While St Pancras has been given a facelift, is the Regent’s Quarter and the area around Caledonian Road to be turned into the grubby back door of this Eurostar flagship zone? I do hope not.
Residents have started to feel safer and happier in King’s Cross. Once, I wouldn’t have walked down that end of the Caledonian Road, let alone lived there.
The council should keep our streets and its residents safe, by saying no to more sex establishment licences.
They’re not for locals. They bring in men from all over London (and with Eurostar, potentially from all of Europe). Let them continue to flock to areas which haven’t been transformed into safe, residential zones and allow women to feel safe when we go outside our front doors.
TANIA CAGNONI
Omega Place, N1
|
 |
|
| |
| Your Comments : |
| |
| |
| |
