Entry 29: Ellingtons Alive!
Replies:
Schulmanator: Yes they do indeed. You can get a tour of the Royal Families rather large art collection on most weekends and on select days the house itself. If the Supreme Wilder would like to visit our small nation we would be happy to put her up in the Castle and she can explore at her leisure.
ROFLyoshi: Yup all the power in Tantico is either gas or wind, apart from Salem that uses the coal it mines.
NMUSpidey: Thanks and I'm glad you like what I've shown of the base game, lets hope I can continue to impress you.
mb 1.0.2: I'm glad you think it looks good and I'd love to see your city as I'm sure its just as good.
Entry 29: Ellingtons Alive!
Welcome back to the our favourite principality. Today, contrary to last entries insinuations we take a break from looking at the Tantico Habour while they get final preparations going for stage two of the project. Today we instead take a trip to Ellington.
What with all the focus on Tantico Harbour you'd have been forgiven for forgetting about Ellington but its still here, plodding along slowly as Tantico City took most of the limelight with all its redevelopment.
Well no longer.
Apparently while they appear to have settled down with its population of 14,000 still making it the second largest settlement in the nation they were really saving. Saving for large amounts of developments it turns out and as phase one of the harbour redevelopment plan was finished Ellington Town Council announced its intention to build homes for 4,000 new residents bought in by continued immigration to the small nation.
Interested I set of to find out what they had planned.
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Fast forward to the end of the development and boy did they finish this fast. The type of housing may have had something to do with at your about to see though.
Firstly we'll take a look at this collage of suburban development, one of the two areas that the council had chosen for residential development. Situated on a strip of farmland on the east side of town this area was mainly cookie cutter housing for low wealth families with a few mid wealth homes mixed in. Also you can see several corner shops and small strip malls were also given the go-ahead to help serve the suburb and provide some more jobs for the growing population.
Now we move into town where most of the residential development has happened. Apparently time was of the essence when these were commissioned and so virtually the same building was chosen to replace most of the town centres two story family homes, you can see in the picture below construction crews hard at work on multiple apartment blocks at once.
This is what the area looks like at the moment. As you can see the same low wealth design was chosen due to its capacity for residents given its footprint. The council has admitted that this may not have been the best approach but it did get the job done. Apparently though talking to some of the residents things aren't all rosy in the packed neighbourhoods but overall residents are happy.
Also in this picture you can see the newly finished Ellington Central Hospital. With a growth of 4,000 citizens, the old clinic was way to overcrowded and plan were made to construct the hospital you see here. You can also see the north side of the town centre and commercial district including the Royal Ellington Theartre which we'll take a closer look at later.
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Before we do take a look at the theartre though I want to show you that development wasn't all residential. In what appears to be a imitation (though on a smaller scale) of Ferryside, Ellington Town Council had some of the money accumulated for the project put into redeveloping a small block of commercial on the edge of the bay into a larger waterside area with hopes of creating a place with an atmosphere similar to Ferryside.
Obviously as you can see in this collage it didn't work perfectly, as a number of less wealthy buildings opened up shop in he newly named Crossbay Point. Still, there are a couple of nice cafes here for a nice light dinner in the evening and a drink and apparently there is a number of more wealthy businesses looking into buying out the ones already there, though whether or not this is true has yet to be announced.
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The final image I've got for you today is the earlier mentioned one of the Royal Ellington Theatre. Owned by the royal family and run by the Ellington Dramatic Society this theartre is the premier place to see shows in the nation.
Renovated and expanded, the older Ellington Drama House that had been showing productions since Ellingtons early day and had recently unfortunately fallen into disrepair due to the rising costs needed to retain the top theartre status in Tantico, what with new ones opening up in the centre of Tantico City. A favourite place of Prince Oliver when he was younger, he purchased the building upon finding out that it was scheduled for demolition.
Providing funds to enlarge and renovate the theatre as well as purchasing the plot of land across the road and developing it into a space for open air performances, the Prince assured that they continued producing the best shows in Tantico, personally attending every new show they put on and recently awarding it a Royal Seal (this only extends to the actual theatre, not the open air performance area, and means that the building is protected).
As such (and along with the growth in the town and nation) the theatre has flourished and is sure to continue to entertain for generations to come.
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That's all for now though. Next time we will (probably) return to the harbour to see is any work has been done on stage two but till then enjoy these pictures of Ellington.
Jamie Felding
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