U-turn clears way for large Bridge retail unit
Friday 15th February 2013, 12:00PM GMT.
Watts and Co managing director Jo Watts outside the industrial unit at Lowlands Industrial Estate which has just been granted change of use to retail. (Picture By Peter Frankland, 1304422)
ANOTHER major retailer could open on the Bridge, and provide competition to Leale’s Yard, after a planning appeals tribunal overturned a decision by the Environment Department.
The application could see part of the 3,400sq. m. Newlands Data Centre on Lowlands industrial estate converted from light industrial to retail, against the advice of planners.
A retailer would now be allowed to use 544sq. m. of the site, in addition to 27 parking spaces.
Iceland had initially intended to take the site – just a few hundred metres from the Bridge – but talks fell through.
Now many Bridge shop owners are excited by the possibility of another major retailer setting up in the north of the island.
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So Environment got it wrong AGAIN and that wrong decision has had to be overturned AGAIN by an appeals panel using a bit of simple common sense
There is something seriously wrong with the set up at Environment.Perhaps a few of the senior planning staff ought to be moved sideways or even encouraged to retire while they still have two hands on their gold plated pensions
It’s only common sense after all
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Transfer them to airport security
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Move them to the gfsc another inept goverment body
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Hold the front page . . . . . . while I try and understand what’s being implied here.
An estate agent can’t find a tenant for a data storage unit. She encourages her client to apply for retail usage. A planning tribunal overturns Environment’s decision to reject the application; this partly on the basis that it adjoins the proposed Co-Op redevelopment and that there would be some retail linkage.
But the Co-Op is already struggling to find tenants in the current downturn and the likelihood is that it won’t be building out its site for at least five years and possible longer. In the meantime, they’ve just lost another possible tenant who chooses to take the newly designated retail space in the Lowlands Industrial Park.
At the same time, the estate Agent tell us that this sets some sort of planning precedent. So, on the other side of town (so to speak), we see a large un-built, much heralded data park off the Braye Road that also appears to be redundant having been zoned for a demand that isn’t there.
Does this mean that Long Port will soon be applying for retail usage and getting it? Would the Co-Op even re-site their development because of the improved access? Where does this fit in with protecting the economic viability of the Town and its High Street.
If this train of logic is right, who sat on the tribunal, what are their qualifications and, more importantly, what were they thinking?
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WRM
I would hope that they were thinking on the lines of …
Here we have a modern commercial building being left to rot because of its restrictive use category, and whilst Environment are quite content to sit back with their giant book of rules and let it rot we on the appeals panel believe that it should be providing employment and generating taxes, so we will loosen that restrictive use category in order to bring life to the area
Remember that the panel were dealing with this one particular building and not the ‘big picture’ as you put it
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@ IWV My point was about precedent. While I might like Island Wide Voting, I don’t fancy island wide development!
The estate agent in the Press’s report claimed that the decision by the Tribunal had implications in respect of other possible applications. While it may or may not be correct in law, it potentially overturns strategic policy in terms of zonings. If that is the case, then I think there’s provision for the Environment Department to appeal this case to the Royal Court.
On a minor point, I don’t think the property is being ‘left to rot’, I think it is, in part at least, let. However, probably not for a return that would justify the redevelopment of the building, which I assume a change to retail would finance.
The real benefit to employment and GDP would come from the development of Leale’s Yard which has been talked about for over 25 years and which this decision only helps to make less likely.
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WRM
Whilst it is clearly the job of the Estate Agent to ‘big it up’I doubt that her comments will sway Environment too much.They don’t appear to learn any lessons when they lose an appeal
On the subject of Environment’s strategic policy in terms of zoning I believe that policy is far too cumbersome with virtually no wriggle room
Combined with Environment’s apparent determination to interpret the rule book so that it supports a decision to say no it is almost impossible to act swiftly and sensibly in times of rapid change brought about by outside influences
You say you don’t fancy island wide development and I agree,but in this case surely all the appeal panel has done is to bring into use an existing building which would have otherwise lain idle
How did they manage to do that?
Probably all they have done is to find the missing wriggle room merely by interpreting the zoning rules in a slightly different way
PS. Totally agree with you about Leale’s yard.I can just about remember attending a presentation at the Vale Douzaine many years ago. I wrote on my voting slip YES YES YES NOW JUST GET ON WITH IT … some hope
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WRM. Exactly what I thought when I read the article.
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If retail is dead in the water, why the need to convert the old barns to retail ? Oh it’s not that retail is dead it’s the fact that rents in SPP high street are so high it kills common sense. Still all that Amazon shopping is keeping Guernsey Post going, some you win some you loose … Moonpig mall ? Lowlands leisure complex ? Leales leftovers ?
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