The Unbearable Luxury Flats of Bristol

bristol | community | opinion/analysis Wednesday August 15, 2007 15:19 by Rich Fish - RifiX mephistos.island at blueyonder dot co dot uk

How to ruin a city

I think as Bristolians we should have more say in the actual architectural designs of the ever increasing new developments. We must not allow the investors to ride roughshod over our planning department and erect hideous new buildings which are out of character with the area.

Appreciate while you still can...

OK, here we go again.

Am I alone in wanting to protect areas from the scourge of residential/leisure development? The latest proposal walking over our meek council is to build yet more 'luxury flats' and a hotel on the land behind the Old Jail in Cumberland Road thus forcing out interesting and aesthetically pleasing businesses such as the Reclamation Centre. Five businesses in total have the difficult task of locating new premises.

These flats will completely destroy the feel of the area not to mention the look and will merely add to the homogeneous image of the city. Remember, it is our council that supported demolition of the TollGate House office block to the left side of the M32 only to replace it with a hideous slab of concrete smack bang in the middle! I refer of course to the new Broadmead traffic disrupting centre. What a welcoming site for our visitors. Can we trust our council not to allow this to happen again?

Yes I know, blah, blah about the need for housing, Oh, and apparently more Leisure 'Complexes' but you can bet your arse that these flats will not be within affordable reach of the average Joe. Moreover just how many more hotels does this city need?

On a positive note, there is to be provision for open space and better access from Cumberland Road to the new Industrial museum (albeit minus half the exhibits which made Bristol great at the time) but on a negative note the planning permission was granted a year ago so it is up to the public to monitor the proposals and file any objections as to how yet another area will be transformed.

For any one who cares enough the original planning application number was 04/04126/P/C and the planning department is on 0117-9223097.