Brewery’s Master Plan unveiled

This is an edited summary of the comments we made to Greene King. Should you wish to see it, the full version is available as a pdf here.

On November 3 Martyn Taylor and I (Peter Riddington) attended a workshop meeting with Greene King (GK) representing the loose association of local amenity groups set up in the spring. This included a presentation of the Draft Master Plan (MP) by Allies and Morrison, GK’s consultants.

Following a site visit in the early summer we had made comments to GK about the aspirations of the different amenity groups and while we were encouraged by and welcomed GK’s commitment to the consultation process, little of what we’d suggested in our earlier consultation had made its way into the draft MP.

One thing now clear is that GK will only have the microbrewery, beer café and shop as their presence on site after their move. If they need offices in the town, they will not be on the site. So, the brewery buildings and land will all become vacant except those limited parts of the brew house. While we accept that GK are a commercial organisation and will wish to ensure the reuse of their property will be commercially viable, we do feel that there has to be a balance between the commerciality of reusing the site/ buildings and public benefits. We feel that the current draft MP reflects a level of, particularly residential, development which heavily weighs on the commercial side.

We are particularly concerned about two key issues:

• Traffic and parking: There is a lot of development proposed, this will make a major difference to the traffic and pressure for parking at the south end of the “grid”. This is not addressed in the draft MP at all.
• Development is proposed on the undeveloped area south of Westgate Street. This parcel of land represents about the last area of open land that would have always delineated the south boundary of the Norman new town, an internationally significant heritage asset. This part of the site is quite rightly protected by its inclusion in the Town Centre Conservation Area.
  

The draft MP describes the proposed housing as an “extension of the grid”. The proposed narrow access routes are described as “The Lanes” implying that the significance of the area has not been taken into consideration.

Our original consultation response outlined various potential “public benefits” that could be offered with the re-planning of the GK estate and most of these were not included in the draft MP. Our suggestions included providing a car park for the grid and for the Theatre Royal, as well as drop off points for St Edmunds School and provision for the extension or outdoor space for the Feoffment School in Bridewell Lane. These are not at present ruled out, but the draft MP sees these potential locations occupied by houses and would be subject to the overall viability of the site redevelopment. The uses for the redundant buildings still seem very sketchy with community and other uses still not decided. This will take some more detailed analysis to establish how these historic industrial buildings can be adapted to new long-term uses.

We look forward to future engagement in the new year and do hope some of what we have said will be reflected in the designs as they get more detailed.