Can we afford Masterplans?

Can we afford Masterplans?

“Businesses in the north of town could suffer, the chairman of a St Helier campaign group has said, after it emerged major refurbishment work on Minden Place car park will lead to its closure for at least four weeks.” (BBC News, 2017)

So how come the Hopkins Masterplan – yes the same ones responsible for the sunken road Waterfront Plans – included demolishing Minden Place Car Park by 2020 and replacing it with residential units, and underground parking for 110 spaces.

This is what the wonderful and no doubt costly plan said:

“Subject to a review at the end of its life, the Masterplan proposes the redevelopment of the unattractive car park and its replacement with a new commercial/residential development with retail on the ground floor opening onto a small square facing Minden Place. Below the development will be an underground shopper’s car park providing space for 100 cars together with 25 spaces for the residential accommodation. 10 disabled parking spaces will be provided at street level.”

Currently there are 262 spaces, but after the refurbishment there will be 237. This is proposing 100!

Can we afford costly Masterplans that never come to fruition?

So far we have from Hopkins:

• A Waterfront Masterplan which is being developed on a pick-n-mix basis, starting with commercial units, and for which the sunken road looks increasingly like a fantasy of the days before 2008 when the States had money to throw about. What we have a good buildings, but design wise, solid cubes with no architectural merit. Just look at Dandara’s one near the Grand Hotel to see how something imaginative can be built that doesn’t get its design ideas by Tate and Lyle.
• A North of Town Masterplan which removes a major shoppers car park, and replaces it with a much smaller scale unit – wonderful for damaging trade in the area. Minden Place is a major car park for the Fish Market and Town Markets, but let’s just go ahead and draw plans without bothering about that.
• An Incinerator design which Freddie Cohen waxed lyrical about, which had trees planted around it, and was apparently not designed to look like an ugly black cube. This is from the architects who found Minden Place car park “unattractive”, and it makes you wonder about their aesthetic sense.

Read this, and try not to laugh (or weep):

“A building of this scale is highly visible and needed to have an aesthetic appropriate to its site and use followed through with thoughtful design. It needed to have a nobility of grandeur in the vein of the best industrial buildings.”

Or you can have a cuboid with metal struts on the roof!