If the Crown Estate is going to spend over £1billion on increasing the density of the business park on the southern side of Cowley Road, then some of that investment has to benefit the children and people of King’s Hedges ward next door.
TL/DR?
“Join us at our upcoming public consultation events to help shape our vision. We are hosting two public exhibitions where you can find out more and share your feedback in person. These will be held on:
• Wednesday 20 November from 4pm – 8pm
• Saturday 23 November from 10am – 2pm
The sessions will be held near the site at Urban Room, Byron House, Cambridge Business Park Milton Road, Cambridge CB4 0WZ“ (Stand outside the BBC Radio Cambridgeshire building, turn a third to your right (facing south-west), and it’s that building). Nearest bus stop is the Cambridge Science Park Guided Bus Stop. See more on their consultation pages here
The £1.5billion regeneration project would also include more than 250 homes, as well as leisure and ‘cultural’ spaces…. …The site currently has 12 buildings on 20 acres of land, with around 325,000 square feet of commercial office space. The masterplan for redevelopment is “in its infancy”, but will include a mix of retail and leisure spaces, a new high street, lab buildings, office space, and homes.“
Cait Findlay, 11 Nov 2024 for the Cambridge News
“What does their vision look like?”
Carbuncle-tastic
Above – by Studio Egret West, who might find that their designs incur the wrath of His Majesty the King who, as Prince of Wales regularly spoke out against such architecture
“Shall we write and tell the King (or should we grab a tent and join them)?”
For those of you who didn’t get the Terrorvision link from the mid-1990s, I don’t think all the people in the world are planning to camp out in our back garden. Just the scientists apparently!
“What does it look like at present?”
1980s/90s lo-rise car-serviced business park blandness – although there are a couple of high profile local organisations based there such as BBC Cambridgeshire (at the red balloon icon) and Redgate Software
Above – from G-Maps – note the car dealership at the bottom right – I think that site should be turned into a new municipal swimming pool for North Cambridge and the busway villages
A new swimming pool on Milton Road?
Yes – I wrote about it here back in January 2022 as proposals for the Anglian Water sewage works site were getting ready to go out to consultation. (Note we are still waiting for a ministerial decision on the highly controversial proposed move to Honey Hill where the Secretary of State is acting in a quasi-judicial capacity (i.e. party political issues cannot be considered, and any decision he made can be challenged in the courts, which is why they are being extra cautious).
As some of you will know, I have been commissioned to do some local history work for the Hartree.Life developers following the recommendation by local residents to name what will be the district in Cambridge after our first woman mayor, Eva Hartree.
Mayor Eva Hartree – the first woman to be elected Mayor of Cambridge in 1924. (Image: Palmer Clarke Archive in the Cambridgeshire Collection, colourised by Nick Harris of Photo Restoration Services, commissioned by Antony Carpen)
“Could anyone ask Cambridge / Cambridgeshire councillors about getting the funds together to help pay for the swimming pool idea?”
There is a Full Council meeting coming up at The Guildhall on 28 Nov 2024 should anyone want to table a public question – see the guidance here. Note that the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Service is due to publish a new indoor leisure facilities strategy (progress update?). Furthermore, the consultant’s report for the GCSP Service stated:
“NEC is not expected to generate sufficient demand for a swimming pool and therefore is not expected to deliver a pool on-site. Following the completion of the Chisholm Trail, future residents at NEC will be able to cycle to Abbey Pools and Parkside in approximately 10 and 12 mins, respectively. However, both swimming pools are extremely busy and therefore not in a position to absorb the additional demand generated by NEC. It therefore follows that NEC should collect S106 contributions towards alternative off-site provision.”
Paragraph 176 of Appendix H4 – Open Space & Recreation Topic Paper (Click on the link and then click on the paper H4)
Note the paragraph that follows it – which I want to contest strongly.
Above – I think it would be outrageous if the funds were spent on a swimming pool primarily accessible to the wealthiest communities in Cambridge rather than the most economically deprived in the county – i.e. Arbury and King’s Hedges. I think city councillors would find it very hard Politically to defend such a move. Especially when the socio-economic data and evidence shows the impact of poverty and multiple deprivation has on the people of King’s Hedges, as well as what a positive impact such a facility could have not only for their neighbourhood but for the teenagers at Cambridge Regional College (a vocational further education college) and for the villages along the guided busway.
Will this negate the need for swimming pool provision at Northstowe, Cambourne, and Waterbeach? Not at all if ministers are going to impose their ‘beyond the limits of the emerging local plan’ vision on Cambridge – which requires the extension of the urban city in more than one direction. We will need more than one additional municipal swimming pool.
“What is the post-construction vision for Cambridge?”
That’s what we’re waiting for the Minister to tell us. Talking to the Cambs Travel Alliance at their pro-bus-franchising pop-up session at Drummer Street yesterday, one of their supporters Cllr Patrick Linton, now on Girton Parish Council told me that the planners need to think about what the future urban Cambridge will be like once all of the building work is complete. And there are no easy answers. We found this out the hard way when a previous generation were given choices on how the economic sub-region should expand in the late 1990s.
Above – from The ghost of Cambridge Futures past – 1997-2003 in Lost Cambridge. Omitting minimum growth, which one did we choose, and which one did we end up with? In the end, we got all of them.
If ministers want to proceed with their rapid and large growth plans, they need to designate not only a second urban centre, but start planning what core attractions each newtown, new neighbourhoods, and expanding villages will have to attract people to their part of the area and ensure that such settlements don’t become dormitory towns for ‘Cambridge overspill’. And that means ensuring wealthy landowners like Crown Estates pay their fair share towards facilities that provide for more than just the people working on their site.
Food for thought?
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Below – go and fly The Kite with Together Culture. Much more fun.
The Cambridge Town Owl 