Author Archives: John (Chair)

Are the Mill Road Depot plans turning into another Cambridge disaster?

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There’s real concern that the new plans for the Mill Road Depot are losing sight of the vision and ideas that were so well captured in the SPD.

Just compare the images below.

  • “Integration with existing communities” was important. But now, from the North end, access is no longer a generous green entry from Ainsworth St, with a view through the site. Instead, it’s a tucked away footpath with a view onto tall buildings. From the South end, the YMCA building sits on the previous position of paths, forcing pedestrian access to the site onto the narrow road past the gatehouse.
  • Both rectangular open spaces are lost and fragmented. These parcels of usable green area looked really valuable since we lack them in Petersfield. Now, the YMCA building sits on one, reducing the trees in the south east corner to simple screening of its large accommodation block instead of public space. The northern other appears fragmented, more overlooked and swallowed up to provide larger houses.
  • Community facilities – at least any decent hall space – seems set to be owned by the YMCA and so would be legally owned for their charitable purposes – setting Petersfield up to lose them if the YMCA decide a different building would better serve their purposes, like the Methodist Church did and the County Council did… We’ve also lost the dedicated community building, of course – an acknowledgement in the SPD that the issue locally is the lack of community-focused, inclusive, welcoming space and not rented rooms – there are plenty of those already on Mill Road.
  • Parking is set at 0.65 cars per dwelling, plus visitors. This is the average of the 2011 census for Petersfield and Romsey we’re told. On a site that has to be accessed from Mill Road, and is so perfectly positioned for trains, bikes and buses, owned by the city council, why such a backward looking target? Besides, the Cambridge Cycling Campaign reckons the actual surrounding streets are more like 0.5 or under today.
  • The YMCA also blocks future visions to incorporate the former Mill Road Library into a viable community space, by sitting so close to it, well beyond the scale of the buildings intended for that area in the SPD. We’re losing the former “gatehouse green” and so damaging potential use of both of those buildings.

It was all going so well… we understand there is a rush to help secure government support for social housing, but can’t we do better?

You can still respond to the latest plans at https://www.millroad-development.co.uk/

 

The Mill Road Depot Opportunity

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There is going to be substantial community space on the Mill Road Depot site. Please go to the consultation on Thursday. We have had discussions with the city council and CIP.
 
PACT wants to see a true Community Centre. However, we keep seeing the role of a “community centre” reduced to rented space and deals and conditions. We do need better rented space – the borrowed spaces locally lack things like storage and access to open space and so we miss out. But that is only part of the story – Petersfield is isolated, surrounded by the railway and the city centre, inside the river; it’s under pressure constantly, at the geographic centre of Cambridge but a conservation area of housing; much of the housing stock is officially deprived – small, dense, old – as well as having economic “pockets of deprivation”; its population is incredibly diverse; and it’s now had a baby boom and the children are staying put, not moving out of the area as before. We need a Community Centre – with those capital letters. We need a common space that is everyone’s. We need the silly teenage youth clubs that I look back on with embarassment; we need the toddler groups open to anyone; we need robust rooms that can be freely used and can be a hub for this community.
 
We can’t gamble again on another organization providing this. We need a true Community Centre which can’t be lost due to another organization having different long term priorities – as keeps happening, because of the nature and position of Petersfield.
 
Please go to the Mill Road Depot consultation at 3-8pm on Thursday at Bharat Bhavan, the old Mill Road Library, and tell them so.
 
John, Chair, PACT.

AGM Tuesday 28th November

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PACT’s AGM will be on Tuesday 28th November, at 7:30pm in the Alex Wood Hall on Norfolk Street (generously made available by our local councillors). Motions by email to chair at pactCambridge.org . Our main focus of discussion will be the Mill Road Depot area, particularly community provision on and around the site.