Dumballs Road - The Embankment

Do any of you think the whole scheme will be parked for now or is the developer likely to begin with the private homes in the meantime ?

Since the Council are looking at alternative options I'm guessing the scheme will be paused while that happens. If there's no agreement the developers may press ahead anyway. It's a big and expensive site to land bank and with the market improving a purely commercial scheme is probably viable. It would be a pity though if the city missed out on some quality social housing in a central location.

Spring 2015 start supposedly:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-30200672

Seems like good news.

Very good news, there seems to be some good momentum in the city in general at the moment.

I'm a bit concerned this project has died. Nothing seems to have happened for ages. Whilst most of the large fabric signs around the site perimeter blew away some months ago, the Bellephoron (which were smaller and made of plastic) have all been taken away at some point in the last couple of weeks.

I've always thought that it was too close to the centre for this type of development. Essentially a residential suburb right in between the bay and the centre. This would just halt any future developments and therefore hinder the ultimate goal of creating a seamless link between the two districts. We need to be earmarking these areas for either office or commercial development in my opinion. Projects which are in demand such as convention centres, arenas and hotels would be ideal.

I disagree Cen. I think that the site is far too large for this to be anything other than resi-led. Otherwise we'll be waiting 15+ years to start (given sites already earmarked for commercial development, many of which are better located), and 30+ for completion.

Earlier plans for this site did incorporate an element of commercial space. I think the most recent ones did too, albeit at a significantly reduced scale, right? But not in the first phase, which is purely residential.

Its still on their website... but as I said, I do sometimes worry this company is trying to run before it has shown it can walk.

Something is starting to happen here.

Demolition of several of the buildings at the top end of Dumballs Road commenced this week - it looks like all the buildings between the laundry and the plumbers merchant are going. You can't see much from the street but at the rear of each building there is significant demolition going on.

This is odd to me as phase one of the Bellerophon plan was demolition and construction of the most southerly of the old warehouses. The buildings facing Dumballs road were the final phase I think. The name on one of the demolition notices is Rightacres; is this a change of plan, anyone know?

Rightacres have plans at that end of the street I recall. They own that land and the Fusion Point 3 site. Plans have been submitted for the latter. Not sure what they plan to do across the road.

But it isn't part of the Bellerophon scheme, which as far as I'm aware is still ongoing, but has gone ominously quiet. Always wondered if this group had bitten off more than they could chew, especially given the fact that the council decided their (slightly dodgy) deal on the social housing didn't stack up. Maybe they couldn't get other social landlords interested either?

I can't understand why the land adjacent to the Taff isn't considered prime real estate. Still wonder what will be done south of the station. Don't know whether Brains would want to re-locate again.

The UK has traditionally made little of its rivers - perhaps because they were so polluted for so long. Hence, Cardiff has turned its back on the Taff, and its banks were the site of industry.

Now of course, it might be quite nice to live by the river. But theres quite a lot of expensive demolition and remediation to do. And it is sandwiched next to the Butetown estate which has a bit of an undeserved reputation as problematic.

Given that there are other sites in the bay for housing and closer to the city centre for offices, I'm not surprised things are a bit slow here. Resi does seem slow to get off the ground across Cardiff though. I think the city does need to expand for the sake of Wales and opportunities for young Welsh people. But the housebuilders who pushed so hard for a pro-expansion LDP aren't exactly rearing to go it seems (and it can't all be slowness on the part of the council - St Ederyns, for insteance).