Date published: 2008/10/09
The Cambridge News says:
Cambridge's huge railway station development, cb1, is being recommended to councillors for approval, the News can reveal.
The master plan for the £850 million scheme - which will see the building of shops, offices, houses and a health centre, surrounding a public square - is due to be considered by a meeting of the city council's planning committee next week.
A report to that meeting by a senior planning officer says the project, the biggest in the city for decades, does not flout Cambridge's planning blueprint, the Development Plan - and "should be supported".
The ball is now in the court of councillors on the committee, who meet in special session at Murray Edwards College - formerly New Hall - on Wednesday.
...
Opponents of the massive development are set to lobby the nine-strong committee in the hope councillors will reject the officer recommendation and say no to the plan.Objectors have claimed the scheme has major flaws, including over-development of the 26-acre site, and the risk it will cause transport chaos in the area.
A public meeting to address the transport concerns was held in Cambridge earlier this week.
Shaun Noble, secretary of Bateman Street and Bateman Mews Residents Association, said: "The officer report recommending approval still has to be looked at by the planning committee.
"On the transport side, we still see it as a 21st Century development with a transport infrastructure based on Victorian streets."
...
The latest version of the development features a new Station Square with a "transport interchange" - with 28 taxi bays and 11 bus stops.A multi-storey car park with room for 632 cars and more than 2,800 cycle parking spaces are also planned.
As well as more than 330 homes, 40 per cent of which will be "affordable", there will be student housing for Anglia Ruskin University, a 120-bed hotel, and a "polyclinic" for Addenbrooke's Hospital and Cambridgeshire Primary Care Trust.
One step forward. Needless to say the NIMBYs are not happy, but it's hard to see the city turning this down now. And if the Bateman Street and Bateman Mews Residents Association doesn't like the "transport infrastructure based on Victorian streets" perhaps they should suggest that the city knock down all the houses on one side of Bateman Street and offer a clear, wide, path towards the cb1 site from Trumpington Road.
The car parking figure looks low, but of course the academic middle class people who run Cambridge hate cars and have deliberately forced the developer to make the development as stupidly hostile to cars as possible (to the limit where the developer would stick up two fingers to the city and walk away). So much for an integrated transport system.
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