Guildford Crescent - 96m 30floors

Found out the second crane is going up in July. Spoke with the crane supervisor

The revised planning application is due to go before the planning committee this week, including the retrospective permission to demolish the original facade. This will, or course, open up all the old wounds and will generate furious comments on X etc, probably a few here too.

This line from the officers report sums it up though: "The only way to address the breach of planning control caused by the unauthorised demolition is through a requirement to rebuild the elevation which is what the application seeks to do, albeit retrospectively".

The revised planning application is due to go before the planning committee this week, including the retrospective permission to demolish the original facade. This will, or course, open up all the old wounds and will generate furious comments on X etc, probably a few here too.

This line from the officers report sums it up though: "The only way to address the breach of planning control caused by the unauthorised demolition is through a requirement to rebuild the elevation which is what the application seeks to do, albeit retrospectively".

Not forgetting the comments section, of course, on Walesonline, where the most Ill-informed rants of all exist.
This will all somehow be interpreted as the fault of the council, despite it being about a private development that over-stepped its council-imposed restrictions.

It is a bunch of terraced houses regardless of the history. Seems people just love to moan and now we have a bus station, people will need to find a new something to moan about

Exactly - a few terraced houses barely a century old - hardly "historic".
If it happened in Merthyr you'd get some snide remarks from Cardiffians, along the lines of "...anything's an improvement for Merthyr..."
Did people care when hundreds of houses were knocked down in Newtown ?
Or when Temperance Town was demolished to make way for the old bus station.
The "Cardiff civic society" are the worst - anything new shouldn't be built.
They're still moaning about the new arena, as they say the CIA is more than good enough, and the new arena would be a blight on the landscape, etc.

While I agree with you about the Cardiff Civic Society I do think, as a point of principle, that proper planning procedures should always be followed. It should be up to the developers and conversationists to make their respective cases and for democratically elected representatives to decide.

The comparison with Newtown and Temperance Town is spurious as the homes in both areas had been condemned as unfit for human habitation. In the case of Temperance Town the demolition took place decades before the building of the bus station. The two weren't linked.

A better comparison is with Butetown where there was indeed a vigorous campaign to save the magnificent houses around Loudoun Square. Looked at from 2024, the conservationists in that case were undoubtedly right.

In town earlier and took this from Churchill Way

Sorry not come out as I hoped. I’ll try again.

I always felt that the controversy surrounding Guildford Crescent was more around the loss of thriving independent businesses than the loss of architecture. Obviously there would have been outcry at the loss of the crescent regardless, but I would imagine that if the buildings were empty/abandoned there would never have been protests.

A better comparison is with Butetown where there was indeed a vigorous campaign to save the magnificent houses around Loudoun Square. Looked at from 2024, the conservationists in that case were undoubtedly right.

I also have to agree with this. Cardiff has been lucky with the lack of historic buildings that have been demolished over the decades, especially when compared to cities like Liverpool and Coventry (not that the average cardiffian appreciates this). But for me, the biggest loss probably is Loudoun Square and the surrounding streets of Butetown (including Bute Street).

Historic preservation can be frustrating at times but it is also extremely important. The difficult thing is working out what is worth saving and what isn't, and unfortunately that largely comes down to personal opinion. In many cases it is hindsight which makes it easier to judge wrongdoings, e.g. the Westgate Street Fire station which probably seemed an obvious thing to knock down when a (much needed at the time) multistory car park could be built to serve the city centre and stadium & a new fire station was needed anyway. Nowadays we curse this decision to knock down such a beautiful building which was replaced by a horrible multi story car park, but it probably made sense at the time.

I hope that in 10 years time we do not lament the demolition of Guildford Crescent.

Butetown could been very different had the original housing been retained, I'm imagining a quite genteel area of the city centre, akin to the surrounds of Edinburgh centre. Sadly the badly planned 60s housing we got hasn't turned out well.