Town Centre Development - consultation outcome

As you may remember, dear reader, Canterbury City Council very kindly ran a public consultation exercise last summer/autumn to find out what Herne Bay thought of their proposals for our town centre. This is the development that centres on the William Street car park, and involves putting up a large supermarket next to the, er, current supermarket, and building a hotel and some shops and houses.

The consultation ended on September 26th 2010, and the Council are now ready to tell us the results. (What took them so long?) The object of the exercise, according to Council policy HB1 is:

Planning Permission will be granted for proposals which deliver the comprehensive and high quality redevelopment of this prominent town centre site to act as a catalyst for the overall regeneration of the town in accordance with the Development Principles Supplementary Planning Document that accompanies the Area Action Plan. 

Such redevelopment should provide additional community, residential, retail, health, office and leisure uses, create a new south facing built frontage to the rear of 108 – 224 High Street, establish clear and strong pedestrian links across the site to William Street and to the Memorial Park, and deliver high quality and co-ordinated public realm and retain overall levels of car parking.

"Public realm" - a phrase that never sees the light of day in everyday conversation, so why use it in public documents?

Anyway, the results are out and will be presented at the next town councillors meeting - the Herne Bay Area Members Panel, Salvation Army Hall, 33 Richmond Street, Herne Bay, Tuesday, 1st February, 2011 6.30 pm.

Comments

[dick eburne]

The final version was approved by Canterbury City Council's Executive on Monday morning 14 February 2011.

I attended, speaking about parking:

1. If the project is successful, more car parking than currently exists will be needed.
2. Coach parking at Swalecliffe Avenue Car Park is not convenient for drop-off and collection of foreign students that currently use the William St. Car Park.
3. Market Traders' vehicles will still need somewhere to park on Saturdays
4. Long-term parking, currently at Kings Road Car Park, will still be needed for those who work in Herne Bay
5. William Street Car Park is currently the ONLY designated HGV park in Canterbury's district. Although the overnight parking of HGVs and coaches has cause problems for nearby residents, there needs to be somewhere that HGVs and coaches can park legally.

The Executive noted my remarks but passed the revised document unaltered.

Dick