| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Friary Park Estate regeneration | |
| Posted by: | Chris Petrie | |
| Date/Time: | 30/11/14 09:30:00 |
| I attended the session from 6-7 on Friday. Only the drawings that were in the news letter were available. They have nothing more than that at this stage and are trying to gage the reaction, through sessions such as this, before they approach the local council and start paying architects for finalized plans. I kept trying to get some firm figures out of them i.e. what will be the percentage increase of people living on the site? How much is the development expected to cost and therefore how many private sales need to be made? How many units of each size will there be? Ignoring the biggest tower, what is the proposed height of the other blocks over 4 storeys that are towards the A40 side. None of these questions could be answered. The message they were giving is that they can only do the redevelopment if they can raise enough money by getting sufficient numbers of people on site. When I asked what this number was they said that it is not known yet. Following on from this I was saying that the tower of course had to go. Their response was that the units lost from this would therefore need to be added back elsewhere. I then responded that if any lost units MUST be added back then they must know how many total units are needed to finance the build. Again they claimed that this number is unknown. I think the numbers are known but are not being shared. I can only really conclude that, as we probably already suspected, at this stage they are simply planning towards absolute maximum capacity. All they care about at this stage is financing the build and getting as much money from the site as possible, nothing more. There was a town planner that joined the conversation and tried to tell me that a high rise building overlooking neighbouring properties would increase their value. Once I had stopped laughing and had then picked my jaw up off the floor I corrected him (unbelievable!). I asked about green spaces and barely any could be pointed out. They pointed out the proposal for 'green roofs' which of course are pointless for people at ground level. They mentioned that some green roofs mat be used as terraces which, on top of the balconies, would provide even more opportunity for overlooking. All permieter blocks will be 4 storeys therefore dwarfing neighbouring 2 and 3 maximum houses. I could go on.... but to summarize, there were no positives whatsoever from this session, just many more negatives. If people don't sufficiently oppose this plan they will be going ahead with it as shown in the sketches. |