Topic: Kicking off the next phase of Town Centre Regeneration after Market Place

[thatmanfez]

Hi Russell,
Just a few quick questions if you don’t mind...

• Will the consultation process take the same form as it did with the Market Place - three basic plans to choose from?
• Have you had any thoughts about how to reduce the impact of the cars parking in the street? I understand the need to maintain vehicle access, but feel the street would benefit from the feeling of more space... I’m not sure how that could be achieved though.
• Do you have any timescales yet?

Yours aye

Fez

[baldy]

Fez
 
Actually, I've had very little input into this other than raising the idea of starting the project - both in the Vision for Westbury plan and recently in terms of getting on with it as a County / Unitary Council project in liaison with the town council.
 
The main point I have discussed with highway engineers is the need for continued vehicle access for shops and residents, albeit as a pedestrian priority area which is probably paved with no pavements.
 
The intention is to retain and improve (ie. use better layouts and designs) the car spaces.
 
It may also change direction, but that is only a possibility rather than a probability.
 
I believe that the first round of consultation is a blank canvass. It is the ideas which emerge from the first round of consultations that will evolve into any clear feasible "options".
 
Those options would then normally be worked up into a more practical design by engineers and those would go back out to a further round of full public consultation.
 
Then the engineers would start looking at costs and feasibility and more detailed designs which evolve into final options for yet more consultation.
 
This is normally how it all goes along .......
 
A lot depends on whether there is a maze of ideas or a clear obvious consensus ......
 
This one will be a more simple and quicker project than the Market Place project .... but the actual works will not take place at least until the financial year 2010-11.
 
Incidentally, the Market Place project started with the public  "Market Place Design Game", which took place one evening in the Old Town Hall in 2004 using huge plan and asking people who popped in to move around the car spaces, trees, open spaces etc (marked with cards etc).