Removing the elevated roads is a welcome development, but if - as in the first image - the roads remain without being downgraded, the streets will still form very considerable barriers to movement. The image above still looks very vehicle-orientated.
Removing these high-level roads should be geared towards how the street edges could be re-occupied - with the vast adjacent areas of surface car parking redeveloped for housing, mixed use and other civic spaces. If parking is required then it should be accommodated in multi-storey car parks with active ground floors.
How then should the streets look? Calmed and greened with pedestrians as the priority. This still looks like an edge-of-town junction right in the heart of things.

Agree with #1, the Bullring ain't pretty but it works very efficiently in traffic terms. The trade off against the chaos involved in removing it would have to be a vast improvement to the public realm, walkability and connectedness, and setting of the Town Hall. Ideally a new centrepiece for the town centre. I see no sign of any of that in these admittedly basic visuals- pedestrians lost in a sea of tarmac, car parks and crossings through multi-lane traffic, with some vague grassed areas (no paths, landscaping, features?) and 40% less of the shopping centre. I hope some nice detailing will follow but I suspect the money will be gone by then. Hugely underwhelming.

Traffic in Greenock needs to be reorganised with more vehicles using Drumfochar Street as a through route to the A78 and Spango Valley.

The heavy failing town vibe should be used to redevlopments advantage -- low economic activity means low land / building coasts so limited road improvements on a network basis should be possible.

Interesting to see the build economics / value dynamic in the local authority's efforts -- it would seem to be more about demolition than large scale rebuilding.

If only they could re-site the Lidl store and Kwik Fit -- might be able to link Victorian Greenock into a semblance of connected spaces.

A lot of money was spent on Hector McNeil house turning it from a nice purpose built library into council offices only a few years ago this should be saved the demolition of half of the mall would be a mistake already the town has lost some big retailers and doing this others will leave to. If the 6 million spent on west blackhall street is an indication of what to expect from this development the people of Greenock should be worried because this has been a disastrous failure.

West Blackhall Street and its recent upgrade -- seen on Google Streetview / costs @ £6mill seemingly -- looks like a "Thirder" project to me.

Thirder project -- third to you / third to me / third to the stupid folk that actually do the work -- was a joke from a few years ago on a local TV show.

I always thought they were pushing the numbers for effect. However after seeing that piece of street "improvement" I think the were a fly on the wall documentary.

The concrete blocks doing the traffic segregation are a bit of a giveaway regarding a "Thirder" project.

No thought for the pedestrians in one of Scotland's wettest places. Is there no way they could hide the car parks and ugly facades of the buildings from the main roads?

This is awful. Don't get me wrong, I don't like the elevated roads and moving to back to street level is good, but the public will be inconvenienced by longer commute time (not many jobs locally) and have to deal with yet more traffic lights, for virtually no benefit. As an ex-Port onion, there is so much potential with the tail of the bank - easy commute to Glasgow / Paisley, great views, access to estuary, open space, but there is a complete lack of vision by council. This also impacts the move west in previous decades to inverkip/ gourock/ wemyss bay will be impacted by removal the bullring again for little benefit.

Also, how much longer do we need to wait for the second and third phases of the Green Oak demolition until it's all gone. Better start planning for this now. Still way too much low quality retail space for a town the size of Greenock. Bulldoze it all (over time) put the streets back with good public spaces and encourage retail into vacant space in West Blackhall Street. Money better spent and when it's successful look at better projects to remove the bullring while making the public realm better. Also get rid of that second tier parking at Tesco (was only needed for Oak Mall anyway).