| Issue no 1 12 July 2004 Welcome to our news
Welcome to the first of a series of regular newsletters from St Edmundsbury Borough Council, aimed at keeping you up-to-date with Bury St Edmunds town centre issues, such as the proposed Cattle Market redevelopment and new cinema.
This is being emailed to groups and individuals throughout the borough who we believe have an interest in the future of our town. Please forward this to anyone you think may be interested. Issues we will be covering in the coming weeks include car parking, the way we're working to create a unified town centre, the decision-making process, the new venue, finance, design, timescales . . . and whatever else you tell us you want to know about. Comments and suggestions for future articles of interest are welcome - please send them to communications@stedsbc.gov.uk and we'll try to cover as many topics as we can. Marianne Hulland, Corporate Communications Manager, St Edmundsbury Borough Council ************************************
Exciting times ahead The most exciting thing about the Cattle Market development is that all of us - the people of the Borough who made their wishes clear and who have closely watched progress so far, the Council officers who have worked so hard to realise our ambitions for the scheme, and the elected members with whom rest the final decisions - are taking part in a special moment in the history of Bury St Edmunds, | a unique opportunity to shape the future prosperity of the town and the region it serves. The vision we share is ambitious. Inevitably challenges have arisen along the way and more will arise as the development moves on to its next phase: these do not detract from the scheme; rather they are themselves opportunities to hone plans and to ensure that what we achieve is what is best for the Borough and its people. The Cattle Market development, when complete, will be seen as an integral part of Bury and the key to its success in the years to come. Cllr Andrew Varley, Chairman, Cattle Market Redevelopment Working Party ************************************
Cinema building work starts! Work starts on the new multi-screen cinema on Parkway on 2 August. The first job is to shift a water main - Anglian Water is tackling that - and then building work can begin. There will be some temporary traffic arrangements, including changed access to the decked car park, for the three weeks while the water main is moved - more detailed information will be available nearer the time. The 8-screen cinema is set to be open in time for the 2005 Christmas blockbusters - meanwhile three family-orientated restaurants have already been signed up to add to the buzz. These include Frankie and Benny's New York-style Italian restaurant, Tootsies grill, and ASK pizza and pasta. Look out in the media and in next week's Town Centre News for a competition to name the new cinema - with a fantastic prize which will see two people winging their way across the Atlantic! |
| Who's coming to town? Everybody wants to know exactly who is coming to town - what shops are we going to see in the new development on the Cattle Market site? It's still all in the hands of those surveyors whose job it is to negotiate exact terms, rent levels, position and so on. Until firms have actually signed on the dotted line no announcements can be made because it can affect negotiating positions. What we can say is that there is strong interest from the types of shops which are usually associated with Debenhams, who have officially signed up and whose store is set to become one of the most striking pieces of architecture in the town. These shops include men's, women's and children's fashions, books, records, sportswear and cafes. ************************************ Car parking - the future Future town centre car parking in Bury St Edmunds is a hot topic and we will be tackling various issues in these newsletters. One major public concern is the apparent drop in space for cars to park in once the Cattle Market redevelopment is complete. Yes, on the present plans, there are physically fewer spaces. No, that does not mean fewer cars will be able to park. As with many things in life, it's all down to management - and St Edmundsbury has been running highly successful, and profitable (therefore good for Council Tax payers) car parks for decades so has a wealth of experience in this field. We also employ experts who have worked on similar projects across the country so we can use their experience gained elsewhere to make sure we don't repeat mistakes other towns may have made. Historically Bury St Edmunds has built up an unusually high level of parking for a town of this size. When the cattle market stopped operating, for example, we turned it into extra car parking because it was an efficient use of space until plans for the new development could be finalised. The multi-deck was built in the early 1990s in the precise location to make it suitable for car parking once the Cattle Market site was redeveloped. That version of the development did not go ahead so the town temporarily gained hundreds of extra spaces without any extra shops. | And does size matter? Not always . . . take this as an example: The Robert Boby Way car park has 108 short stay spaces and was recorded as 66% full at its Wednesday peak time and 99% full at its Saturday peak. At the same time, the 600 long-stay space Parkway multi-deck car park - a similar distance from town - was 49% full on Wednesday and 41% full on Saturday. The number of parking events for the year 02/03 in Robert Boby Way was 152,091, compared to 82,380 for the multi-deck. The smaller, short stay car park is busier than the much larger, long stay car park. It's not the size of the car park that matters - it's what you do with it. ************************************ Working Party The next meeting of the Cattle Market Redevelopment Working Party (chairman Cllr Andrew Varley, vice chairman Cllr Sheila Wormleighton) is on Wednesday 14 July, 11am in the Athenaeum. The first part of the meeting is open to the public - on the agenda is the brief to architects for the new public venue and appointment of our own consultants so we can check the accuracy of the retail impact assessment carried out by Montagu Evans, consultants working for Centros Miller. The assessment demonstrates overwhelming evidence of the need for a large increase in retail floorspace in Bury St Edmunds with no adverse impact on existing town centre retailers. With so much at stake, councillors need to be convinced that this assessment is reliable. As it's a specialist area of work we are getting our own experts in to take a critical look and check its accuracy. ************************************ Changing times St Edmundsbury is the landowner of the Cattle Market site, and will remain so in the future. The scheme is still evolving as comments, ideas and reactions from the public and our partners are taken into account, so watch this space. The planning applications for the Cattle Market redevelopment have been submitted by Centros Miller and will be subject to decision by the Development Control Committee later this year. |
