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Greyfriars bus station was a bus station which formerly served the town of Northampton, England, owned and managed by Northampton Borough Council. The bus station was situated in the Northampton Town Centre between Greyfriars (street) and Lady's Lane. It used to be accessed from the Grosvenor Shopping Centre, The Mounts and Sheep Street. The access from street level to the bus station was via subway, with the bus stands accessible via an escalator or lift. Services were relocated to North Gate bus station from 2 March 2014, and the structure demolished on 15 March 2015.〔 ==History== Built at a cost of £7,250,000 (£50,000,000 at 2013 prices), Greyfriars Bus Station was opened in 1976, replacing the previous facility at Derngate,〔(With plans to build a new bus station in Northampton expected to be approved within months and the demolition of Greyfriars to follow close behind, The Chron explores the history of the notorious bus station . . . ). ''Chronicle & Echo''. 3 March 2013. Retrieved 26 February 2013.〕 and was designed by Arup Associates. The building was designed to accommodate 40,000 passengers and 1,700 buses a day and included a complex brief of a bus station, with car park over, topped by a three-storey office block (Greyfriars House). The office block was supported over the clear spans below by a complex structural design based around reinforced concrete trusses.〔('An Architects Vision of Northampton' ), Northampton with vision.〕 The new station was built in response to the needs in the town at the time, namely bringing visitors into the town to the Grosvenor Centre.〔 Having been first proposed in 1972 with a budget of £2,578,000, construction work started in August 1973 with a revised budget of £3,308,000 and an original opening date of October 1, 1974. but the building eventually opened (although the office block was still under construction) on 25 April 1976. Initial reviews were mixed and some deficiencies in the design started to manifest themselves early on. On the first weekend of operation, one of the lifts broke down and just a month after opening the building was labelled "useless" by disabled bus users. Eighteen months after opening, in September 1977, mineral stalactites had started forming on the ceilings of some of the underpass walkways within the building, an issue which would continue throughout the building's life.〔 Greyfriars House was envisaged as a way for the building's owners, Northampton Borough Council, to pay off the increased construction cost of the building; however, despite being completed at the end of 1976, this section of the building remained empty until 1981. Council officials were able to broker a deal with the Dutch engineering firm Lummus whereby they would relocate from their offices in London, to Northampton. Whilst one of the conditions on the new tenants was that they would have to spend £1.5 million modernising the building, the Council granted a five-year rent-free period in exchange. In 1986, as the five-year period was coming to an end, Lummus announced plans to pull out of the UK and the offices once again became vacant. Barclaycard agreed to take the lease of the top floor of the building the same year, later taking on the whole three floors in 1987. A decade later, however, Barclaycard also left the building in a move which cost the Council an estimated £1,800,000 (1998 figures) in rental income. The office space remained empty until the building was closed on the 2nd March 2014. In 2007, the 300-space first floor car park was closed, albeit temporarily, over concerns that chemicals were leaking through the upper stories of the building and causing damage to vehicles parked in the car park below. The car park later reopened although closed for good a year later after the Council were unwilling to make the investment (reported at the time to be on the order of £250,000) to rectify the situation. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Greyfriars bus station」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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