The Planning Inspector hearing the appeal from Messrs Richer against refusal of planning permission from Cambridge City Council to demolish one of the few iconic town buildings left in our city provides a unique opportunity for Cambridge’s affluent and wealth-creating sectors to create a new joint town-gown community centre in the heart of our city
This is sort of personal for me because I’ve spent almost a decade trying to get Cambridge City Council and others to bring this wonderful building back into public use – as this list of videos going back to 2016 shows!
I’m not going to go into detail about what has happened over the past decade or so – the Planning Inspector made his ruling here and that is the end of it. Feel free to have a browse through my previous blogposts here.
Here is the BBC News item of the appeal following the refusal by Cambridge City Council’s planning committee. Credit to all of those involved in pushing back on this application, in particular Cambridge Past, Present, and Future.
The big test for Cambridge’s civic society: How much are your concerns about inequalities worth? Can you make initiatives like The Cambridge Pledge mean something tangible?
For me the challenge is straight forward:
Form a town-gown consortium to raise funds and purchase the building of Messrs Richer and convert it into a much-needed town-gown community centre to serve as a base for student and community groups and also a forum for which people and communities from across our city and county can use to discuss and debate the future of our city – and also celebrate some of our joint successes.
Two new and important groups/organisations need long term accommodation – both of whom are becoming core participants as organisers of events on the future of our city.
The venue and location could be an ideal spot for Cambridge University Students Union too.
“So, who wants to take this idea forward?”
Not me.
“Why not?”
Because I lack the skills, competencies, support networks, confidence, capabilities and also sound physical and mental health to be able to pull off something like this. Furthermore, I think one of the biggest risks to such an idea like this succeeding would be my in-depth involvement. Something like this needs to come from a new generation of people – including a new generation of students. And not just students at the University of Cambridge, but also from Anglia Ruskin, from Cambridge Regional College, and from the further education/sixth form colleges across our city.
We’ve already had one conceptual proposal sketched out by Jonathan Gimblett below.
Above – proposals from Jonathan Gimblett which I featured in this blogpost.
I don’t know if any of the firms who are supporting the Cambridge Pledge might be interested in this. I just think it would be nice for our city to have something tangible to demonstrate that as a city we can work together on something big for our city, one that combines the efforts and talents of all of us.
After all, if Cambridge is going to grow and try to become greater than the sum of our parts, why not use this unused building that has been empty for a decade and a half and bring it back into use for the many, not the few?
Food for thought?
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The Cambridge Town Owl 