A new community centre could be opening up in Liscard hoping to help address the problems that led to it being described as "the Wild West at night."
The former St John’s Ambulance training facility off Fairview Avenue just outside the town centre in Liscard could reopen as a new community centre called Shine Together.
Michelle Naylor, who's taken over the building, wants it to become a safe place for families going forward.
Upstairs, Michelle is hoping to turn it into a community cafe with chairs, tables, hot drinks, and food while in one corner will be books and couches.
She hopes eventually this will become an after-school youth club focusing on primary school age children initially, adding: “I want to provide an ideal environment that takes pressure off parents.”
Downstairs, there’s plans for a social supermarket, a laundry room, an art room, as well as a gaming room.
Despite the massive undertaking, Michelle said she had over 50 people contact her through social media, businesses offering to help out, backing for the social supermarket, and on February 24, she's inviting people down including local councillors to help for a community action day.
Despite the massive undertaking, Michelle expects coffee mornings to start up in about a month’s time with a uniform swap and the social supermarket to slowly open after that. A fundraiser is also planned for April 21.
She said: "I have always worked and I have worked for two different charities. Before that I was a single mum with three boys.
"At the age of 22, life was hard. I was really lucky and got a job at a local charity," adding: "I was that young mum with £2.20 in my electric meter but I worked hard to change my life."
Michelle started out working for Charlotte’s Brightside before moving onto Shaftesbury Youth Club.
However, she told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: "I was very conscious it wasn’t my community. That is something I struggled with but I have got so much passion and drive to help people.
"Life is hard and life is tough. Whether you are working poor on benefits, life is tough."
She approached the LDRS after it reported on the impact of antisocial behaviour in the town centre as it awaits a £12m investment from Wirral Council to regenerate it.
Improvements to businesses, the development of derelict buildings on Egerton Grove, and a new community centre are all promised as part of the plans but progress is yet to be seen on the ground.
Several people told the LDRS one of the solutions to the current antisocial behaviour problems would be creating a new community centre for children to go.
Michelle said the issues showed somewhere like Shine Together is needed, adding: "I just feel like every child should be given the opportunity to be a child.
"I want it to become part of the community, the central point in people’s lives, to know people are there at the end of the phone. I want to get the youth in.
"The youth at the moment are out of control and it’s so sad because inside all those balaclavas are really good kids which are a bit lost.
"If I can create something here where they can come and learn skills, they can come here and chill with their friends in a safe place where their parents know where they are.
"Make the community a nicer place, a safer place for them. People see youths and say scum but there’s so many good people inside and I want to help them achieve their true potential.”
"I have been absolutely overwhelmed with the response from people I don’t even know. I feel like people want it. They need it.
"They want to invest in it. People have said 'I am no good at DIY' but they asked to be a volunteer in the shop. I want it to be a place for people to come and shine as cringy as that sounds."
More information can be found on Shine Together here .
