Thu Nov 24, 2016 4:58 pm
I went today. There are lots of people ready to talk to you and forms to fill in with your views, plus a very informative display.
They are planning for over 210 apartments (I've forgotten the exact number), some 1 bed, the majority 2 bed but quite a few 3 and 4 bed ones - yet they think they only need 50-60 parking spaces. I'm not sure why they don't know exactly how many parking spaces there will be, given they knew exactly how many flats and how many bedrooms each, but even with 60 it would be grossly under-served for parking in an area already suffering from parking problems. A very cheerful young lady assured me that most people would cycle or use public transport, but the woman next to me said "I live in Celestia and there are 3 people who cycle; two of them are me and my husband".
The plan is to remove the through road for cars, but allow the bendy-bus to keep driving through, plus residents cars presumably - even though part of the plan is to have a children's play area. This strikes me as a potential safety issue.
They are also very vague about what would go on the ground floor commercially and the person I spoke to wasn't aware of the poor letting record for the similar units under Sovereign Quay (which have parking nearby, when these don't). They also seem to think there will be lots of interest from restaurants, but even in Mermaid Quay there's a good unit been empty for months after two quick failures, so I'm none too sure about that.
The feedback form was, as these things often are, designed to get the answers they want. It doesn't mention parking, but it does ask you what they could do to preserve Welsh culture and heritage. Interestingly, it also implies that the building would shelter others from the wind - not sure what that's about. But the form also forgets that anyone lives or works there already - a question about how often you visit the area has a maximum of "once a week" going down to "once a year".