I THINK it’s fair to say the great and good at the Town Hall have big ambitions for Warrington.

On the face of it, there’s nothing wrong with that.

Standing still is not an option and progress has to be made.

So on the face of it, the plans to develop the land bounded by Winwick Street and Tanners Lane in the so-called Stadium Quarter is a good thing.

Well yes and no.

Grand plans to develop the site were shelved thanks to the global financial crisis of 2008 but now developers are back. So let’s just look at the implications of what is being proposed.

At the moment, the land is being partly used by a car wash company but the vast majority of it is a surface car park (yes, I know driving on it is like driving over a ploughed field but it does its job).

Anecdotally, most users of the car park are commuters travelling from Central Station who pay just £2.50 day for the privilege.

So my first question to Warrington Borough Council and the developers is where do all those hundreds of cars go if the scheme goes ahead?

It’s not an unreasonable question to ask given the popularity of the car park.

I parked there on Friday and returned from Manchester mid afternoon and the car park was more or less full.

So we move on to my second point.

According to the report on the Guardian’s website, ‘Wireworks Warrington’ proposes six buildings of between two and 17 storeys that will accommodate up to 550 residential dwellings, a 160-bed hotel and 3,000 square metres of commercial, office and retail space.

Just let that sink in...17 storeys. That’s massive.

I have been known to complain that the Market Car Park and the Time Square development is disproportionately big for a town such as Warrington but a 17-storey building would make those new town centre buildings look like a model village.

Given that most of the Stadium Quarter plan is for residential and hotel accommodation, I can only assume the people who move in will have cars.

Where, I wonder, will they park them? I think we need answers.

But even if solutions are found to these problems, one fact is inescapable.

The development is downright ugly.

What I really don’t understand is that when developers publish their artist’s impression, they are invariably done to show the plans in the best possible light yet the plans shown by developer Demetrius Ltd have all the attractiveness of a Soviet-era block of workers’ flats in East Germany.

Remarkably, some of the drawings actually give the impression the proposed new buildings were designed by the same people who came up with New Town House, which is undoubtedly one of the ugliest building in Warrington.

This is somewhat at odds with the design and access statement by the developers which says: “The proposed development goes towards providing attractive, well designed and sustainable new homes within a diverse neighbourhood, that supports healthy communities and economic growth.

“The scheme will be enriched by the inclusion of green space and an enhanced public realm to support new residents, workers and the local community.”

Beauty, they say is in the eye of the beholder and this beholder doesn’t see anything that could be remotely described as ‘attractive’.

The Stadium Quarter plan does have one thing going for it. At least it is proposed for a brownfield site rather than building in leafy Stockton Heath or Appleton.

But in all honesty, I think this scheme does raise more questions than it answers. Maybe it’s time to go back to the drawing board, literally.