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The sky is crystal clear blue and the tide is out exposing acres of golden sand.

A rose-tinted glance at Whitmore Bay on a day like this could almost mistake it for Australia's Gold Coast - were it not for the biting wind that's so cold today it almost bruises your face as it whips inland off the sea.

It might be winter on Barry Island, but the beach is bustling with visitors. Ok, it's not quite the August bank holiday in 1950 when more than 120,000 were crammed onto the sands, but there are people everywhere you look.

Many are accompanied by one or more four-legged friends - the fruits of a plan to resurrect Barry Island as an all-year-round destination that included reaching out directly to dog walkers.

Even early on a winter's day many of the outlets are open and there is a buzz on the Island. People of all ages walk by nodding to each other, stopping to chat or grab a hot drink.

With a view of the bay, and clientele that is about 50% human, Marco's Cafe is doing good business on this cold winter's day.

The venue, a local institution, was made world famous by the TV show Gavin and Stacey.

Its Welsh-Italian owner Marco Zeraschi is often referred to as Mr Barry Island - "If you cut me in half you’d find Barry Island written through me like on a stick of rock" - and in person he's as cheery and enterprising as the famous square mile of land on which he's made his name.

His family are celebrating a 60-year relationship with the famous seaside town this year and by his reckoning they run about 25% of the businesses on the Island. His son, he says, is buying up property like he is playing Monopoly.

It all began when Marco’s father purchased the Piccolo in 1958, and the latest acquisition by the family is two units on the western promenade, which is being converted into an ice cream parlour.

Mr Zeraschi has seen the Island go from the boom times with Butlin's to the bleak and deserted years when the holiday camp left. But he is optimistic for the future.

(Image: Andrew James) (Image: Andrew James)

Perhaps a little too confident. He thinks the island could become bigger than Cardiff Bay. You have to admire the ambition, but it seems to have become inflected with more than a little bluster.

But it's not hard to see why Mr Zeraschi has a belief in this seaside patch of land.

In the property game you'd call it a bit of fixer-upper. Some aspects are perfect, while others are in dire need of some love.

Walking along Paget Road there is a dark green, Victorian canopy running along the shops, interrupted by a row of four fronts, before resuming again. There is glass missing from a number of the sections, and the a number of the frontages could, to put it kindly, be described as a little garish.

The former home of the famous Merry Friars club is an imposing, solid, grey building. The upper floors and basement are used as a gym - the local featherweight world champion Lee Selby can be seen training there on occasion. On Friars Road is the grand Esplanade building, which is adorned with plastic signs for the children's soft play centre on the first floor. It is a popular venue with spectacular, sweeping views of the bay. On the ground floor is a Hyper Value, a fish and chip bar, and five cafes.

In some senses, it's good to see that they're being used at all. That's not always been a given with buildings like them during certain phases of Barry Island's turbulent life. But it's hard to escape the feeling that other seaside resorts of the type Barry seeks to rival would see these prime locations filled with luxury restaurants and boutique hotels. The chippies and amusement arcades would be restaurants and craft shops.

(Image: Andrew James) (Image: Andrew James)

But then would it still be Barry Island?

Down the coast in Penarth, the equivalent stretch of seafront boasts the Michelin-starred James Sommerin, which has rooms above, The Fig Tree restaurant, a shop selling upmarket beach-inspired furniture and gifts, and a cafe.

However Barry is not Penarth, and not being Penarth was the making of the town back in the late 19th century.

"The working class of the south Wales coalfield had already cultivated a love of the seaside,” said Dr Andy Croll, principal lecturer in history at the University of South Wales .

"A committed few journeyed to Aberystwyth to satiate their demand for saline pleasures. Many more took advantage of the newly instituted bank holidays and flocked, by rail, to Penarth in the 1880s and early 1890s.

"However, the reception they received at the hands of bourgeois Penarthians was even chillier than the waters that lapped at the town's pebbly beach."

When The Barry Dock Company linked the Island to the wider rail network it brought Whitmore Bay within easy reach for thousands of day-trippers from the coalfields. Barry began drawing workers from the Valleys and as far afield as the Midlands.

The inter-war period saw sustained investment. A stone sea wall replaced an older wooden structure. The sand dunes were refashioned into ornamental gardens. Shelters and bandstands were thrown up (many of which remain today). And the funfair, by now in the hands of the Collins family, added ever more attractions to entice and thrill the day-trippers.

After the Second World War, the resort went from strength to strength. Visitor numbers boomed. In the mid-1960s, a Butlin’s holiday camp opened, bringing yet more visitors to the Island.

While Barry Island may be only 170 acres - described by the New York Times in 1977 as a "stubby peninsula" - it has played a large part in the lives of generations of families across south Wales and beyond.

When the Island fell into decline following the departure of Butlin's at the end of the 20th century, a sense of nostalgia for this golden era drove many to yearn for something that could recapture the excitement the memories of its heydays evoke.

And despite a succession of false start down the years, that desire is still there. A glance back at the traffic chaos caused by the funfair reopening in Easter 2015 is just one piece of evidence of the widely-held aspiration for this cherished piece of land to return to its former glories.

(Image: Tark) (Image: Tark)

On the Waterfront

These days though, the Island is not actually much of an Island.

A huge estate - along with an Asda superstore - has sprung up, providing provided a second route onto the Island above and beyond Harbour Road, the single waterside artery that connected the town to its seafront for so long.

When complete the Waterfront development will have added around 2,000 homes to what is already Wales' biggest town.

When it comes to talking about the regeneration of Barry, Paul Haley has been there and bought the T-shirt. In fact, he probably hand-stitched and printed himself.

The Waterfront itself would look nothing like how it's shaping up today had enough half the projects that Mr Haley has been privy to over the years come to fruition.

Mr Haley, chairman of Pride in Barry for 13 years, recalls a regeneration strategy that was drawn up in the the late 90s that involved developing land, infrastructure, roads, drainage, and bridges to bring the dock, town and Island back together.

"A central initiative was to develop a steam heritage railway which joined up a necklace of attractions around the periphery of Barry, via a new transport Hub at Barry Dock Station through to Barry Island," he says.

"This would enable the WDA [Welsh Development Agency] to save some old heritage buildings, reconvert them, and create a unique proposition for visitors to disembark from Arriva at Barry Dock, and then steam engine to Barry Island Train Station Museum.

"The strategy aimed to create new modern undercover attractions at Barry Island, a university campus on the Waterfront, and to make the dock water a real feature, with sailing and potentially a marina by changing the locking mechanism by conversion of Bailey's old dry dock. And a business park which would target Admiral as an anchor tenant."

Mr Haley points to the number of business parks in places like Caerphilly and Pencoed and the number of people in Barry commuting into Cardiff for work.

"If you had Admiral coming into Barry, putting in another one of its call centres in then you'd find KPMG would want to want to go alongside it, a legal firm would come in and you start to build up a little bit of a network," he says.

Mr Haley adds that there could be a college that then feeds into the business cluster. He says that Cardiff and Vale College has been looking at sites in the town, specifically the land opposite Barry Docks train station and land behind Asda on the Waterfront and by the goods shed.

There was also once a plan for a hospitality and catering college to be based on the Nell's Point site on the Island - apt given the Island's long history in the service sector.

A recent report from the property consultancy JLL argued the lack of high quality business premises is threatening jobs and economic growth in Wales.

Cadoxton, on the east end of Barry, takes 18 minutes on the train to Cardiff Central, while from Barry Island it is 29 minutes. In between is Barry Docks and Barry Station. Businesses located in Barry could still be plugged into the capital of Wales. And the town still feels blocked from achieving its full potential.

One of Barry's biggest business success stories is Spectrum Collections. The company, which makes "the world’s most Instagram-able make-up brushes", was started by sisters Sophie and Hannah Pycroft in their Barry garage. It is now valued at being worth £12m.

They want to keep the business in Barry but say they have struggled to scale up in the town due to severe lack in suitable space. As a result, they're now looking to move to Penarth to find somewhere they can fit all their staff.

The sisters say local MP (and secretary of state for Wales) Alun Cairns and the Vale of Glamorgan council's cabinet member Jonathan Bird had been trying to help them but say they have felt a lack of support from the council more broadly.

It's exactly the kind of situation Mr Haley is talking about when he argues that Barry regeneration needs to be a non-political matter.

He believes there needs to be a solid partnership drawn up between the Welsh Government, the Vale of Glamorgan council , the Waterfront Consortium, and the community. Mr Haley says it needs to be properly funded and a plan set up stating where they want to be in five years.

Mr Haley feels that since the demise of the WDA the regeneration has been fragmented, and because it was not ring-fenced, the sale proceeds of land is not going back into the pot. He believes that is what should have happened and it would have "massively paid for itself and it could be more aspirational than what is currently being delivered."

(Image: Andrew James) (Image: Richard Swingler)

At present, bar Asda, the Waterfront is all housing. The supermarket was expected to be joined by cafes, bars, restaurants, a hotel and a primary school.

There is outline consent for the hotel, although the council is yet to receive a detailed application.

They have had an application for the ‘District centre’ part of the Barry Waterfront development. This is for 57 residential apartments, along with a 1,885sqm food and drink site and a 390 sq m assigned for flexible commercial use.

The East Quay homes – towards the Docks – and its neighbouring 2.2 acres of parkland are set to be in the shadow of a biomass incinerator , or gasification plant, that recently gained approval from Natural Resources Wales.

"It's terrible for the visual image of Barry," says Max Wallis of the Docks Incinerator Action Group (DIAG).

"Looking back from Barry Island, you see not an interesting town to explore, but a huge chimney, sometimes belching a smoke trail over homes."

The council opposed the development. NRW said the licence was granted following consultation with local residents, Public Health Wales and South Wales Fire and Rescue Service.

Get ready for the weekenders

In recent years, the council has made a concerted effort to revitalise the Island, albeit on a smaller scale than some of the grand projects that failed to get off the ground.

Money has been spent on bringing back the vibrant beach huts, a children's climbing wall and improving the Promenade. There are also a number of events put on at weekends throughout the summer to drive more visitors to the Island.

Each year the Council undertakes a Barry Island customer satisfaction survey. John Thomas, leader of the Vale of Glamorgan council, says the council has surveys to identify areas for improvement and development.

(Image: Patrick Olner) (Image: PA) (Image: Andrew James)

"Last year research revealed the Weekenders programme had reached 150,000 people over a six-week period and 76% of the information had been sourced through social media,” he says.

"The latest figures indicate tourism was worth £13.9m to the economy of Barry Island in 2016 and attracted an estimated 388,000 visitors for 394,000 days. Last year’s six-week Barry Island Weekenders programme was estimated to be worth £583,180 to the local economy, attracted in excess of 48,000 direct visitors, 47% of which were from outside the Vale."

The council, he says, is looking to work further with local businesses and "visitors capitalise on the resurgence in the Island and to secure further investment in facilities".

The council’s dog-friendly initiative, Paws in the Vale, aimed to encourage shops, eateries and accommodation to welcome dogs into their establishments. The beach is open to dogs from October to the end of April.

"The Island has become a hotspot for dog walkers, with many travelling significant distances to visit with their pets,” says Mr Thomas.

The plan is they then visit one of the cafes.

This is exactly what Linda Keeble, with her husband, two daughters, niece and great nephew are all doing.

"We have walked here for years,” says Mrs Keeble.

"We used to sometimes be the only people on the beach."

Mrs Keeble said she really started to see a change about four or five years ago.

(Image: Andrew James)

The family talk as they enjoy teas and coffees in one of the newest establishments on the Island after their stroll along the sand.

Whitmore + Jackson was opened two-and-a-half years ago by David and Rachel Lewis, who left behind their careers in retail to start the business. The business, named after two of the town’s bays, is located on Friars Road, in the Esplanade building.

"Our aim with the business was that we were going to generate somewhere that was going to be open all year round, it was always our plan to be open every day of the year, apart from Christmas day," he says.

"We would very much pitch ourselves as somewhere for local people to come.”

Mr Lewis acknowledges that while some businesses look to daytrippers to provide the bulk of their revenue, their aim was to get the core of their business from regular, local customers.

"The cream on the cake is the other people that come down in the summer," says Mr Lewis.

This calculated risk has worked out, although he says some of their busiest days have been in the so-called off season.

With winter tackled, the evenings are next. Most days, the Island resembles a ghost town after 5pm, but that's the next target for Mr Lewis. He plans on opening in the evening with a newly acquired licence to sell alcohol.

A matter of convenience

(Image: Andrew James)

A development just up Friars Road from Whitmore + Jackson should help the night trade - although it's unlikely that many who've walked past this humble toilet block over the years have envisaged the key role it could play in Barry's commercial development.

After years of looking for an owner, this vacant Grade II-listed facility has finally been bought .

A disused WC it may be, but this is not your average breezeblock-built public toilet. It was built in the days when even a toilet block was given grand treatment, and has an architectural charm all of its own.

James Morse, the commercial director of the developer Nextcolour, and his company acquired the dilapidated block that has stunning views. They plan to redevelop the site into a restaurant hub.

Nextcolour has experience of helping to revitalise a seaside town, having been behind the development of Oyster Wharf on Mumbles.

The multi-million pound redevelopment, which includes restaurant and retail schemes, resulted in the restoration of the Tivoli Arcade and new Georgian sandstone-type buildings.

Mr Morse sees similarities between the development in Mumbles and the renovation of the public convenience block on Barry Island.

He's calling the development is called Nell's Point, in no small part motivated by a desire to stop his carefully considered leisure development being characterised as just fixing up a derelict toilet.

The Nell's Point site will be home to three or four restaurants, he says, and the plans for the site and the new tenants and the design will be much clearer in a couple of months, subject to planning permission and listed building consent.

The start of building should start after the summer season and be completed before the end of 2019.

"The hope is Nell's Point will be a catalyst for improving the area," says Mr Morse.

"It's about improving facilities there. The main thing is that Barry Island has to move with the times to attract tourists to the area. The leisure market is getting more sophisticated than it was even just 10 years ago.”

Mr Zeraschi concurs.

"Ten years ago you wouldn’t have gotten a waffle on Barry Island," he says.

"You wouldn't have gotten a pancake. It is more cosmopolitan now."

It is this development and the plans of Henry Danter, the owner of the fairground, that provide the background to that Cardiff Bay proclamation.

Mr Danter purchased the fairground almost three years ago and vowed to turned it into "the best tourist attraction in Wales" within five years. He promised to spend £22m to ensure that vision became reality .

But so far his tenure has been mired into controversy. The big wheel has returned following a spat with the council over its height, and the hope is both parties will now start to work closer together.

"Several years ago if I told you you’d be drinking a latte or a cappuccino on Barry Island in the middle of the winter people would look at me say this man needs medical help," says Mr Zeraschi.

"But now I am saying in five years time, with what [Henry] Danter is doing to the fairground and the [Nell’s Point] development going on the top there we can be just as busy as Cardiff Bay.

"And we have more on Cardiff Bay. We have a beach and a railway station, right on our doorstep."

(Image: Richard Swingler) (Image: Richard Swingler)

Next to the Nell's Point development is the Friars Walk car park and the former home of Butlin's. It is also a plot of land that has been languishing on the for sale list for quite some time.

A proposal for a hotel resort fell through in late 2016 when negotiations between Warner Leisure Hotels, which specialises in holidays for adults, and the Vale of Glamorgan council fell apart over a funding gap.

The plans had been welcomed by the council at the end of 2015 "as a significant first step towards another exciting chapter in the resort’s recent history". But as with so many projects heralded as an exciting new chapter, it failed to materialise.

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At the time Nic Hodges, Baruc ward councillor and now mayor, was forthright in his condemnation: "There's lots of heat, but not much light."

He was strongly critical of the council for having one short-listed scheme that they could not deliver, and questioned whether some of the cabinet members were up to the task of taking the project forward.

Mr Haley recalls plans for an entertainment complex planned for the Butlin's site, that also failed to materialise.

John Collins, whose family used to own the fairground and spent years advising the Tussards Group, was involved in the plans and a study on what attractions were within two hours of Barry, and what the gaps were.

The plans were for three buildings: an undercover American-style entertainment centre, an aquarium and a 'black box' site that would host different, touring exhibitions to constantly give visitors a new reason to come back to the Island.

He believes it failed to happen is because of the inherent short-termism of politically-driven decision making. Because of the nature of electoral terms, council leaders, in his view, will also favour projects that can be completed within their tenure, rather than more ambitious schemes that may take longer to deliver, and thus risk handing any political capital to the next incumbent of the office.

One example Mr Haley gives is the beach huts.

They did not, he says, create a single job. An entertainment complex would have created dozens. Hundreds, even. In a nutshell, that's why he believes the regeneration of Barry needs to be ring fenced.

In Mr Haley's view, the complex would have re-energised the Island and brought hotels to the area.

There's a belief that with the new Qatar Airways route from Cardiff Airport starting in May there's an opportunity to sell the town as a perfect base for people either before or after flights. Either way, the town is desperately short of hotel accommodation in comparison with other holiday resorts it would say as its peers.

Opposite the proposed new restaurant hub is the old Dolphin bar. In 2015, permission was granted for 25 dwellings and commercial units in 2015. But nothing's been built and the deadline has now passed. It's an all-too-familiar tale. While every lapsed development may have its own reasons for not having progressed, they're all part of a trend towards frustratingly slow progress.

While it has changed, and the Island has trade all year round the huge plot and white elephant of former Butlin's site is the key in taking the Island up a level.

The right project has the ability to be transform the whole area. But as the recent history of Barry shows, there's a great deal of difference between vision and reality.

Broad appeal

The main route to Barry Island travels along Broad Street, home to a massive JD Wetherspoons, two nightclubs, a number of fast food outlets and a few restaurants.

A first-time visitor would be unlikely to realise they were standing just one street back from Wales' most independent shopping district. More on that later.

While Mr Morse feels that the restaurant cluster on the Island may help rejuvenate the area, it hasn't worked out that way on Broad Street.

The street looks tired and run down. The canopies running along a parade of shops looks like it could be brought down by a gust of wind, battered by a winter of stormy weather.

While a few restaurants remain, a glance at a few property websites shows all is not well. Casa Paco, Streets Brasserie and the formerly award-winning The Gallery are all advertised for sale.

The Gallery was put up for sale in late 2016 when the owner Barnaby Hibbert decided he wanted to spend more time with his family. Just before he sold it had been named in The Times' list of the 25 best family restaurants in the UK.

The new owners had previously run Habana Bar and Grill and Chaplins on the High Street, but the property is now back on the market. A spokesman for the venue said it's no longer serving food, only drinks.

The Sir Samuel Romilly, the gargantuan Wetherspoons venue has plans to be even bigger , swallowing up three neighbouring properties and expanding its beer garden by demolishing one. So some venues are finding the area profitable.

But Barry is not totally bereft of successful dining options. In fact it's home to one of the best Welsh culinary success stories of recent years.

Almost two years since opening it is still hard to get a table at the Hang Fire Southern Kitchen.

The barbecue restaurant is part of arguably the town's most successful renovation: The Pumphouse.

The huge stone building is a triumph of industrial regeneration. Inside is an achingly cool exterior and a barbecue menu with the urban cool of east London.

Hang Fire ran as a very popular pop up restaurant around Cardiff before finding a permanent home in Barry, and the Pumphouse developer Simon Baston has plans to repeat its success of the building close by.

(Image: South Wales Echo) (Image: Simon Baston)

He recently had a bid accepted for the goods shed building opposite, and has laid out plans to introduce a small box village .

If this corner of the Barry Waterfront development can attract a few more pop ups to call Barry their permanent home, then a model it might look to replicate would be Tynemouth, a coastal town near Newcastle.

The northern resort was listed as the Rough Guide's best seaside town, saying it's “where Geordie foodies flock” and it has a successful Sunday flea market.

Hang Fire has shown people are willing to travel to Barry for the right restaurant. The goods shed site is also home to a tourist railway station that links to the Island. If this was operating regularly then these two potential restaurant hubs could be linked.

Back towards the centre of town is High Street - parallel to its struggling counterpart, Broad Street.

While perhaps not on the same level as the High Street in Cowbridge, its aesthetic is more than enough for the average American to describe it as quaint.

In Barry West, which incorporates the High Street, Broad Street, Island Road and Park Crescent, 92.6% of the shops are independently run, according to data by The Local Data Company (LDC) and British Independent Retailers. That makes it the most independent shopping area in Wales, the fourth in the UK.

The traders on the High Street want to keep the area as independent as possible, seeing the paucity of chain stores as its unique selling point.

"As society shifts and changes things do become more international and global, which is great, but independents are really the heart of the community," says Fay Blakeley of the gift shop Homemade Wales.

Better links between the Island the High Street shopping quarter could help both thrive.

The council’s operational manager for regeneration, Bob Guy, calls it the "hidden jewel in Barry’s crown".

Making new memories

It seems that Barry is unable to shake off the perception that this is a working class town for working class people. Unfair maybe, but it's hard to imagine an incinerator being built in Penarth or Cowbridge.

But as an outsider looking in Mr Morse believes the town is a "hidden gem in many ways". And there are many people in Barry working hard and investing to make it shine.

This town and the Island holds cherished memories for a huge number of people.

If these latest projects and developments happen then the new, modern Barry will help find its own way and create more memories for more generations.