New website/Work starts on the Cinema building

[Nick]

Our new website www.dreamlandmargate.com has officially launched today, on the day that visible work commenced at Dreamland. Scaffolding will be rising up the cinema building from tomorrow and we are now actively making arrangements for work to start on the Scenic Railway early next year.

For more on today's milestones, visit our news page: http://www.joylandbooks.com/scenicrailway/news.htm

[Jim Douglas Jr.]

Hell yeah!

[Vince, Charlie and Sam]

Interesting and informative site. If work does start on restoration of the SR next year and volunteers are still needed for this, I'm up for it.

[towell_p]

Delighted to hear that things are now happening on site. Does this mean that Thanet Council have agreed to seek compulsory purchase of the site?

[Nick]

The Council resolved to CPO the site some months ago and that process is slowly moving forward. But this is not a confrontational project and the owners of Dreamland are fully engaged with us and supportive of our proposals for the amusement park of historic rides.

It is true to say there has been slippage, but as somebody who works in the land and property development sector I am yet to work on a scheme where land dealings happen quicker than expected. They are always much slower!

Our funders are fully up-to-date with progress and, as things currently stand, are behind us on this.

We hope to have more news on progress soon, and we will report it at the Save Dreamland news page.

And to avoid confusion, yes we do now have two separate websites. www.savedreamland.co.uk is the website of the Save Dreamland Campaign (as is this Forum) and www.dreamlandmargate.com is the website of the Dreamland Trust. The former is focused on saving Dreamland (you would never have guessed that if I hadn't told you!), whereas the latter is the organisation that is actually delivering the new Dreamland, in partnership with Thanet District Council and others, and holder of a large part of the funding for the project. Several people (such as me) are involved with both organisations, but they are completely different entities. To stay fully up to speed you should regularly visit both websites.

[Peet]

Fantastic new website. I have a quick question, on the new park map (the 'design brief') the circular water chute is distinctly absent. There appears to be a water chute similar to Wicksteed park's (ie. a single car moves up and down the same ramp).
Does this represent a change in plans, or am I just reading too much into what is a fairly low detail plan?

[Nick]

Don't read too much into that. It is merely a brief for our designers as we firm up on the layout and was just used to represent a water chute. It is not the type of water chute we have in storage and is much smaller. However, don't expect a water chute in Phase 1 as the water chute rebuld will be the single most expensive ride in the project.

[Muzza]

Fantastic news. This had made my Christmas!

[epiclyawesome]

oh, that was the ride i was most looking forward to, the water chute. After seeing the historic pictures.

Damn

But, i nearly did hyperventilate when i saw that physical work is starting, i never thought it was going to happen deep down.

[timj]

This progress is great news!

Tim

[David Ellis]

That's fantastic news!

[Jim Douglas Jr.]

I hope the Bobs and arsonists are losing sleep over this.
You lose, jerks!

[porterm]

Great news indeed after all the general weekly media doom and gloom, or make that almost daily stories. Let's just hope most of us will still have some form of employment to enable us to be able to enjoy our leisure time.

Hopefully the Dreamland project will now start receiving a little more media attention as of late only one certain other attraction, scheduled to open on 16 April 2011, appears to rather hog the limelight somewhat.

Margate's new dawn could finally be on the horizon now.

Martin

[andy]

Fantastic news. So happy to hear this. To echo Vince above, if any help is needed it would be a pleasure to volunteer.

[Vince, Charlie and Sam]

I'll post some pics as the work progresses, this was taken today. the building has been fenced off with Heras fencing and I believe scaffolding was due to start today but understandably there's no work going on today.