Friarsgate Development - TrustNews Feb 02
Plan of Friarsgate area
Click to enlarge
The Friarsgate area, just like the Brooks, is of immense importance to the future character of the centre of the City, and the Trust is worried that its potential may be wasted by something as inappropriate to Winchester as the Brooks development.
The Brooks shopping centre was the outcome of pressures unrelated to the needs or wishes of the people of Winchester - despite the fact that the City Council owned the whole site. At Friarsgate where the City's ownership is very small, the ambitions of the primary landowner, Stagecoach, will naturally tend to take precedence over the good of Winchester. They already appear to have chosen a developer and an architect whose aptitude for handling such an historic area is suspect.
Unfortunately we cannot rely solely on the City Council's planning powers which are surprisingly limited. But in other cities it has been possible for the planners to exert their influence in representing "the public brief” so that developers have been persuaded to do something much more useful and in character.
This entails a very great deal of time and expertise on the part of the planners especially in the early stages, and the Trust's concern is that an already overstretched planning department will find it impossible to provide sufficient time and expertise to exert the necessary persuasion. It is too late to wait for the developer's proposals; to succeed in influencing the outcome on our behalf, the planners must very firmly lead the way from the outset. And this will not happen unless the City Council backs the planning department with the extra funds to resource this exceptional challenge. So far we are not convinced that this will be the case.
The Trust (which has considerable expertise but even less time) aims to help the planners in any way it can, with ideas, with comment, and with criticism when necessary. When promised a say in the brief for the Brooks we politely waited until it was too late - this time we cannot afford to be so circumspect.