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Hotel and luxury apartment plans revealed for coal exchange

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RandomComment

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Re: Hotel and luxury apartment plans revealed for coal excha

PostThu Feb 18, 2016 4:43 pm

Karl wrote:I've no objection to it being turned into a hotel although hopefully not a Travelodge on steroids. Ideally with the trading hall still open for public events and with bars/restaurants aimed at the general public and not just residents.

I'd be less happy with it being turned into apartments. That part of the Bay is still the most interesting architecturally and historically. If it's best building is turned into private apartments I can only see the Mt Stuart Square area becoming quieter than it already is and ever more isolated.

The ideal would be a mix of business units, concert hall, restaurants/bars and perhaps a hotel element. In reality it will be whatever brings in the most money to justify the huge expense of renovating the building. I really can't see business rents being at a level to justify the costs for a private developer unless you have a blue chip client who wants a statement HQ - but with the plethora of Grade A office developments in the pipeline in Cardiff at the moment thats very unlikley.


I agee with all this. If we want the private sector to invest whats needed to properly conserve (where possible), refurbish, and maintain the building its not going to be as a small business incubator. Rents just wont be high enough to cover the costs. All they'd really allow is some painting over of the cracks.

So that means, most likely, something like hotel or short-stay accomodation, restaurants, and private resi. If we want the main hall to be used probably the hotel is better than the private resi (remember the Point anyone?).

Otherwise we're talking about millions of pounds of subsidy required - millons that are hard to find, and I must say, probably rather hard to justify, given the current fiscal environment.
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Frank

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Re: Hotel and luxury apartment plans revealed for coal excha

PostThu Feb 18, 2016 7:33 pm

I'm not quite sure what can be done with it. Obviously the building matters but I'm not sure the surrounding area is that great. I'm not sure there's a need for new arts facilities right now and you have lots of rooms around the building that might not suit it. Bulldoze through some of the walls?
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Peiriannydd

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Re: Hotel and luxury apartment plans revealed for coal excha

PostThu Feb 18, 2016 8:38 pm

Ash wrote:It was meant to be just that - and you can still see parts of the refit. I was one of the small number who voted Yes in the 1979 devolution referendum. Those of you who voted the other way can thank yourselves for the shit Wales endured for the next three decades.

Sadly, I think we're about to repeat the mistake by bigging up the pathetic 'Welsh' Labour and the bonkers Ukip in the coming election.


I'm well aware of that and it's shame that it was never done, both the building and devolution in 1979.

Spending £69.6 million on that Richard Rogers monstronsity was criminal. The Coal Exchange could have been refurbished to a high standard for a fraction of that price. The Government could also have taken over a few other buildings around that area for government departments/offices etc. and formed a nice little government quarter down there. That would have brought life and purpose back to the old buildings and it would have also freed up a prime bit of real estate in the new waterfront for say, flats, offices or some other entertainment venue.

The entire Bay regeneration has been a massive, massive lost opportunity for Cardiff.
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Re: Hotel and luxury apartment plans revealed for coal excha

PostThu Feb 18, 2016 11:18 pm

I really like the Senedd building, and don't feel the cost all that outrageous - about £23 per person in Wales. I also don't feel able to judge at all how much it would have cost to retrofit something like the Coal Exchange, and what damage would have been caused. For instance, is the main hall the right shape and size for the main chamber? Is there room for a public viewing gallery? Is there room for the offices of the AMs, their staff and other parliamentary staff? What about committee rooms (again requiring suitable viewing space)? We might have ended up with a costly conversion, and almost certainly a building with more costly maintenance. I just don't know what the costs would have been on such a project - and one could easily foresee cost overruns on such a complex refurbishment and repurposing.

We'd probably also have more empty space in the inner harbour area as well. What would occupy Ty Hywel? Quite a lot of the occupiers of Caspian Point 2 are only there because of its very close proximity to the Assembly building.

So I don't think its an obvious case at all.
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Frank

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Re: Hotel and luxury apartment plans revealed for coal excha

PostFri Feb 19, 2016 12:33 am

It's worth considering the extortionate cost of maintaining the Palace of Westminster. And I say that as a traditionalist.
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Cardiff

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Re: Hotel and luxury apartment plans revealed for coal excha

PostFri Feb 19, 2016 3:08 pm

Peiriannydd wrote:
Ash wrote:It was meant to be just that - and you can still see parts of the refit. I was one of the small number who voted Yes in the 1979 devolution referendum. Those of you who voted the other way can thank yourselves for the shit Wales endured for the next three decades.

Sadly, I think we're about to repeat the mistake by bigging up the pathetic 'Welsh' Labour and the bonkers Ukip in the coming election.


I'm well aware of that and it's shame that it was never done, both the building and devolution in 1979.

Spending £69.6 million on that Richard Rogers monstronsity was criminal. The Coal Exchange could have been refurbished to a high standard for a fraction of that price. The Government could also have taken over a few other buildings around that area for government departments/offices etc. and formed a nice little government quarter down there. That would have brought life and purpose back to the old buildings and it would have also freed up a prime bit of real estate in the new waterfront for say, flats, offices or some other entertainment venue.

The entire Bay regeneration has been a massive, massive lost opportunity for Cardiff.


I think the Senedd is a very pretty and iconic building for the bay and along with the Millennium center creates a physical focus for the bays regeneration outside of flats and leisure. While you judge the bay as a massive lost opportunity, you fail to acknowledge what a massive achieved opportunity it is, especially considering how poor of a state it was and how popular it is now to live, play and to a lesser extent work. Any development can be critasised, especially ones on such a huge scale and ambition, in lets face it a small back water city in a not very important part of Europe.
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Peiriannydd

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Re: Hotel and luxury apartment plans revealed for coal excha

PostSun Feb 21, 2016 4:07 pm

Cardiff wrote: While you judge the bay as a massive lost opportunity, you fail to acknowledge what a massive achieved opportunity it is, especially considering how poor of a state it was and how popular it is now to live, play and to a lesser extent work. Any development can be critasised, especially ones on such a huge scale and ambition, in lets face it a small back water city in a not very important part of Europe.


Let’s look at the 5 aims and objectives of the Bay redevelopment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_B ... orporation
1. To promote development and provide a superb environment in which people will want to live, work and play.
2. To re-unite the City of Cardiff with its waterfront.
3. To bring forward a mix of development which would create a wide range of job opportunities and would reflect the hopes and aspirations of the communities of the area.
4. To achieve the highest standard of design and quality in all types of development and investment.
5. To establish the area as a recognized centre of excellence and innovation in the field of urban regeneration.

Item 1: Debatable, especially the work aspect.
Item 2: Complete and utter failure! The Bay feels totally cut off from the city centre, despite being only a 15-minute walk. But if someone wanted to go there on the train from say Bristol, they’d have to get off at Central, back track to Queen St and then get the line down to the Bay. How stupid is that! Given the area that was to be redeveloped, why not address this fundamental problem by realinging the tracks?
Item 3: Ongoing to be fair.
Item 4: This may be true in terms of some individual buildings, but not necessarily as a whole. There are a lot of cheap and nasty looking buildings down there, but sadly, this is true of much of the UK.
Item 5: Failure. The regeneration has been widely criticised as being such a poor example of urban regeneration.

To be clear, I’m no fan of Adrian Jones, but I think on this point he summed it up reasonable well:
“…it is the lack of any coherent urban structure, of real streets and worthwhile public spaces. In other words, it is the dumb plan. Instead of building on the strong pre-existing urban fabric, this has been ignored and left to rot. A new ex-urban car-dominated masterplan has been superimposed.
“Worse, Butetown has been literally ghettoised with new development turning its back on the community, which is fairly amazing as the rationale for public investment in the Bay was ostensibly about the deprived communities of south Cardiff.
http://yourcardiff.mediawales-1.titanin ... eneration/

To me, the Bay feels empty and soulless. Given the area involved and the finance required, maybe we should have taken longer. Look at the Melbourne Docklands redevelopment, that started on a 25-year plan. The Cardiff Bay corporation ended after 13 years and in my opinion, before the job was finished.
http://www.places.vic.gov.au/precincts- ... /docklands

I'm hoping that when the Dumballs Road development is finished, together with Callaghan Sq and Capital Quarter, that the city will feel a lot more connected. But in reality, I don't think this will be achieved without a Metro that involves light-rail linking the bay with other parts of the city.
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Ash

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Re: Hotel and luxury apartment plans revealed for coal excha

PostSun Feb 21, 2016 4:13 pm

Peiriannydd wrote:

To me, the Bay feels empty and soulless. Given the area involved and the finance required, maybe we should have taken longer. Look at the Melbourne Docklands redevelopment, that started on a 25-year plan. The Cardiff Bay corporation ended after 13 years and in my opinion, before the job was finished.
http://www.places.vic.gov.au/precincts- ... /docklands


Hmm.. the Melbourne docklands development... that would be this place.

This was supposed to be an image of what Docklands would be like, 20 years on. But two decades later not only had Docklands failed to fulfil that dream, the yet-to-be completed precinct had been ruled a soulless, dispiriting, windswept failure, its waterfront dominated by soaring towers.

Today, however, the focus has shifted to how - or whether - the project may be redeemed over its second decade of development.

''It's very difficult for anything to be redeemed,'' says community association president Roger Gardner, a self-declared lover of the place but one not blind to its faults since building began in earnest more than 10 years ago. ''The buildings are already up. The problems that we have - and I don't want to list too many of them, but I include wind tunnels, which everybody knows about, traffic congestion, exterior building design - there's no control over that. There's no control over the distance between buildings, there's no control over a lot of things. The developers have done what they like until now. We hope that will be reined in a bit.''


http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/can-docklands-be-put-back-together-again-20120302-1u82a.html
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Cardiff

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Re: Hotel and luxury apartment plans revealed for coal excha

PostSun Feb 21, 2016 6:08 pm

I live in the bay and walk to the city center to work, i really dont feel disconnected from the city center any more than other places 25 minutes walk away are (i can walk along Lloyd George ave, the river, Bute dock or at worst Dumballs road (my last choice) all within 25-30 minutes). It is also definitely not a soulless place, any reasonably dry and sunny day brings more life to this part of the city than any other bar the city center itself! I think if you only ever come to a place when its raining or cold then you arnt going to get a real idea of the place. The bay has been around for 10-20 years and i do feel a strong sense of community and place, everyone without exception who lives there has said how much they love it. To compare Cardiff with a maximum population of just under 1 million at the utmost push to Melbourne (a city i have been to and know reasonably well) of over 4 million comfortably, is ridiculous, again a good example of my point to what has been achieved for such a small insignificant city like Cardiff! I am not sayign the bay i perfect by any means but it is far, far from a failed development, it has regenerated a part of the city that had literally nothing there, and nothing going for it, and i would question how much development the city center would have received if it wasn't there also.
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Briz-Tim

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Re: Hotel and luxury apartment plans revealed for coal excha

PostSun Feb 21, 2016 7:31 pm

Given the rest of The Bay, I find the lack of improvement around Old Butetown really depressing. When I moved to Cardiff there was so much anticipation and high expectations about what the regeneration of the docks signified and what the positive affect it would have on this particular area, fast forward a fair number of years and there's barely been any progress. The closure of The Point certainly didn't help, probably scared off a lot of would-be-investors in the area and became something a death knell for any decent nightlife or commercial offering from developing. I'm hoping that will change!
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