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The three men appointed to the Guernsey Development Agency spent Friday afternoon walking along the east coast, discussing ideas already in play for regenerating underused areas, and saying they want to listen to the public about what could be done.
The States agreed a budget of £250,000 to cover wages over the next two and a half years.
Entrepreneur Peter Watson - the founder of Vets4Pets, was appointed Chair of the Agency with Simon Kildahl and Louis Le Poidevin directors. They both have extensive experience in the legal and business sectors.
They were proposed by Policy and Resources with Deputy Peter Ferbrache welcoming their appointments, saying he wants to see "sympathetic" improvements to the east coast.
Mr Watson said that is what they want to see happen too. But first, they will be listening to what other people want to see.
Pictured: The new Agency is tasked with enhancing the visitor economy, supporting the development of a Bridge Strategy, help make the centres of St Peter Port and St Sampson more attractive as places to live and work, and support the island's decarbonisation aims.
"We're going to be taking all sorts of plans that have been done over the last 20 years trying to look at them, distill them, and try to bring then into a more cohesive plan for the whole of the east coast, and then trying to turn those into reality, after an awful lot of consultation.
"We'll be doing things like competitions and community engagement days, and sounding out some of our ideas and say 'are we barking mad or is it what you want to see?' It is very much about listening to the people, listening to commercial organisations as well. How can we develop the East Coast for the benefit of the people?"
Mr Watson is hoping there'll be some progress within a year, but for now he and his Agency colleagues are looking to gather any relevant information, so they can sift through it.
"If it was easy, it would have been done already," he said, adding that one of their main aims will be to "preserve this the wonderful part of the island".
"We are not going to be doing things which damage this beautiful place," Mr Watson said. "St Peter Port is unique and we respect that and we want to make sure that that stays the same going forward."
Pictured: The Guernsey Development Agency has an initial budget of £250,000 which has to cover the wages of the Chair and two directors over the next two and a half years.
Mr Kildahl said the three Agency members had been talking prior to their formal appointments on Thursday so they were keen to hit the ground running with a walk around town on Friday.
"We're very much keen to hit the ground running from from day one, and day one today is actually doing a walkthrough of the whole area that we've we're looking at and is within our remit.
"There have been lots of ideas by lots of people over a very long time, but what we'd like to try and achieve is is to pull all that information together and generate that into workable projects and and action, but that's brought into by the whole local community and that community engagement that Peter has already spoken about."
Mr Le Poidevin said they won't be looking to make any large scale changes without public support
"We need to have some input and understand where the planning issues are going because we're subject to all the normal controls that you would expect. But I think we can go and start doing some small projects, getting them under way.
"It's very exciting to be part of this project and we intend to make the very best of it."
Pictured top: Simon Kildahl, Peter Watson and Louis Le Poidevin.
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