No-one wants to see big projects fail in their city. No-one wants to see people losing their jobs and for the reputations to be tarnished.
Today is a dark day for our city, but the closure of the Castle and the fact the Trust has fallen into liquidation is not something that has come as a surprise to many of us.
The people behind the costly £30m revamp had a chance to make something brilliant. To make something the people of Nottingham, those families living in the shadows of the sandstone cliffs, could be proud of and visit again and again.
We were told the Castle would rival York and Warwick; a challenge to begin with as even a cursory glance at TripAdvisor will tell you it's 'not a castle'.
Read more: Live updates as Nottingham Castle closed as trust goes into liquidation
Here in Nottingham we own Robin Hood. But go to the Castle and beyond one chance to fire an arrow at a target, there is a huge missed opportunity to make the most of our most famous export. Why couldn't we get it right?
Yes the wooden playground was fantastic for kids, but that doesn't justify the near £40 price tag for a family, because nearly everything else was extra. Want to go to the caves? Another tenner at least for a family. And when you've finished at the playground, the art galleries were not an enticing prospect for the average family.
The people of Nottingham have always been allowed into the gardens for free, but not now. And that's part of the problem; Trustees put more barriers around the Castle than ever before, cutting it off from residents. Who exactly was the Castle aimed at? It certainly wasn't the people of this city.
There's all of this before we even get to the scandals that engulfed the attraction during the 16 months it was open.
Scores of staff publicly resigned, some coming to us to talk about what they claimed went on behind the gates. Chief Executive Sara Blair-Manning handed in her notice just weeks after the grand re-opening, vowing to take her former employer to an employment tribunal. Prices were reviewed following widespread criticism and weak visitor numbers.
And of course there was a bitter racism row, with artist Panya Banjoko claiming she and her granddaughters were subjected to a hate incident in the grounds of the Castle. Panya claimed she was not taken seriously thereafter and staged several protests outside the gates of the attraction.
Following the demise of the Broadmarsh, there comes a point where you ask what's next for Nottingham? We need strong leadership now. Someone who can come in and rebuild from the bottom, make the Broad Marsh area the gateway to our city it needs to be, get people through the doors of the Castle and get them into the shops, pubs and restaurants that are still clinging on in this bleak cost of living crisis. This city has the potential to be brilliant, but at the moment we're perilously close to losing our title of 'Queen of the Midlands'.
To our readers, this is not the Nottingham Post doing our city down. It's about saying what needs to be said, when it needs to be said and calling for change.
And we'll be here to celebrate when Nottingham picks itself up again - which we hope beyond hope that it will.
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