TRESA recently attended a consultation event organised by the developers of Whitehouse Street/Princess Street. Having viewed the outline plans, we have some serious concerns about the proposals. You can view the proposals and submit a comment at : https://princessstreetredevelopment.co.uk/
Below is a copy of our response to the developers.
As the residents group for Totterdown, we wanted to thank you for inviting us to your consultation event.
We realise these are early concepts and things are open to change so we wanted to share our comments on the proposal. Starting with the positive aspects of the scheme:
- A new residential neighbourhood: We recognise that these designs will radically transform the area to provide new homes. As a community group we are interested in the long term health of the community. We know that communities are often better when they are diverse and when people identify an area as their home. Therefore, we are less impressed with short-term buildings, but rather the long-term place-making and efforts to support this.
- Active frontage : We liked the 6-storey buildings with active shop fronts With the right sort of businesses we can imagine some nice places being created, which feel safe at various times of the day and evening, such as at Wapping Wharf in Bristol.
- Single management company: We appreciated that a single management company would run the site to ensure quality. It is well known that tenants often have less sense of community than owner occupiers so we would welcome more details on long-term tenancy agreements being provided.
- Biodiversity: The addition of green space is an improvement on current ecology (although that is a very low bar). A handful of shrubs and saplings will have little impact on biodiversity but there needs to be a clear, long-term, enforceable maintenance plan to ensure the planting is properly cared for and thrives. After a few years it may either provide an attractive streetscape with a modicum of ecological value, or degenerate into patches of litter-strewn, neglected shrubs.
- BREEAM: We welcome the commitment to high standards of energy efficiency for these buildings.
- Materials: Initial suggestions of materials were considered suitable.
Whilst the proposal has positive areas, there are many areas of concern. We would like to highlight these, to ensure that they are included in any report of the ‘consultation’. Unfortunately, some developers are prone to cherry-picking positive comments and ignoring the serious concern of local people.
- Car Free: We recognise the ambition to be totally car free but have some concerns on the practicality. Many of the residents will own vehicles – so where will they go? Do you expect the local streets to just absorb the extra vehicles?
This area is not well served by public transport.- Temple Meads station is over 1km away.
- The bus stop by Temple meads is about 800m.
- The bus stop at Bedminster Parade is about 600m away.
Given this, we would have liked to see much more on the mitigations in place to make this workable. E.g. Areas dedicated to car clubs, special areas set aside for supermarket delivery vehicles, better storage and access for bicycles, clearer designs for cycle lanes, dedicated electric scooter parking locations, all to make life easier without a car – rather than just removing parking altogether and simply hoping it works. Perhaps the area could have a residents parking scheme to ensure local streets are not overrun with cars. We would ask the developer to actively push for this rather than leave it for the council to resolve separately. Regarding the ambition to be car free It feels as though these real problems are being ignored and left for the council to cover.
- Student block: We are unsure about this. There are already several large developments in progress with dedicated student accommodation. Is there really the demand for this? Over concentration of student accommodation does not lend itself to healthy, dynamic communities (due to the transitory nature of the students). We would prefer to see more homes rather than squeezing in smaller units. This feels like an attempt at extracting more money from the site rather than creating a balanced community.
- Affordable block: We welcome the affordable units yet would have preferred to see a range of social provision as well – rather than just “affordable” (which is still not affordable as most people understand the term).
The current design has all affordable units in a separate block. Best practice is to avoid this approach as it often leads to segregation or these blocks being treated as poor ghettos. Why not have the affordable units mixed throughout the site?
- Encouraging amenities in commercial units: Having attended many consultations we know that a common concern is lack of amenities like nurseries, doctors, dentists, etc. All these new residents will put a strain on already stretched amenities so we would like to see some of these included as part of this development. Developers often state that their commercial units could be used for healthcare or community spaces – we would like to see the developer put in place long term controls or covenants that consistently favour these highly valued amenities. E.g. a covenant that stipulates a commercial unit must be for community healthcare.
- Height: This is one of our biggest concerns and we note that it was a common concern of others who visited the ‘consultation’ event. It needs to be addressed. The 21-storey tower is totally unacceptable. It is massively over-sized for this area and will create an overbearing tower block that dominates the surroundings and adversely impact the skyline.
During the consultation event the architect claimed that the Council’s Urban Living SPD wasnot relevant as the Whitehouse regeneration framework superseded it. This is not correct. The regeneration framework explicitly cites the SPD and in many places restates that the SPD is relevant. The framework and the SPD mention the prevailing height of this area as 3-4 storeys. So amplified height of 1.5x is 4-6 storeys. The framework mentions the possibility (not eventuality) of a contextual taller building at a particular site and suggests 10 storeys. Nowhere does the framework document mention a 21-storey tower. The framework also notes that citizens were concerned by excessive building height (page 32).
We feel this proposal is just an outright insult and a mockery of the framework. A building of 10 storeys would be considered more acceptable.
- Views: The 21-storey tower will loom over the area. Although much was made in the ‘consultation’ about key views across the city from the viewing point in Victoria Park, there are numerous views that would be adversely punctuated by an ‘anywhere architecture’ oblong tower. It is worth remembering that Bedminster is a conservation area that has special character and appearance. The stated aim of Bristol City Council is to preserve or enhance them.
- Density: The Urban Living SPD and the Whitehouse Regeneration Framework present optimum densities. This part of the city is clearly defined as an optimum density of 120 dwellings per hectare. This development appears to be about 850 dwellings (450+400 student units) across 1.6 ha. This is about 530 dph which is over 450% of the optimum density suggested.
The SPD helpfully points out “Recent research (Superdensity- HTA et al 2015) has shown that very high density can challenge positive response to context, successful placemaking and liveability aspirations, sometimes resulting in poor quality development.”
As a community group we welcome gentle density to support the need for homes. This proposal is simply excessive and will not create a nice place to live. If this proposal were all 6-8 storeys high, such as the successful Wapping Wharf development, this would be a very significant increase in density for the area (and likely still above the optimum!). We could probably support this scale of development, but not the hyper densities this proposal offers.
In summary, we appreciated the time and energy spent by your team and feel there are many valuable aspects of this development. However, we have several significant concerns mostly around wildly excessive height and density. We would welcome an alternative proposal with a maximum height of 10 storeys and feel this would be much more acceptable for the local community.
We look forward to engaging further to create a sustainable, healthy community that will be a welcome place to live for decades into the future.
TRESA