by pie81 » Mon Mar 06, 2017 4:07 pm
My concern with this proposal is that Wandsworth is taking two public sites and ending up with only one. The other will be sold into private hands forever.
In doing so it is selling off one of its "crown jewels" i.e. a large plot of land right on Northcote Road. This can only be done once, once sold it is sold forever.
I strongly believe the council should look for solutions where it retains both sites for public use - at least on the ground floor level. We don't need more shop units on Northcote Road, there are plenty that are empty as it is. Why not rebuild both sites with a public facility at ground level? One side library, one side community hall - perhaps with a new playground open to the public at weekends as a previous poster suggested (how wonderful would that be). Flats above both sites and where the garages are should be enough to finance that, I'd have thought.
The current proposal seems remarkably unimaginative. Given it's proposing to sell off a valuable public site forever, I would like to see more done to persuade us all that that is worth the sacrifice. (Or preferably, as I say, a proposal which doesn't sacrifice so much public space).
To be honest I'm a little bit skeptical about where the cash raised will be going. I'm not convinced it will all be used to finance the rebuild. I suspect some may be going to cover funding gaps elsewhere so that Wandsworth can keep its "never raised taxes" badge. If that's true then it's very short termist and selling off long term public assets for short term political gain.
My concern with this proposal is that Wandsworth is taking two public sites and ending up with only one. The other will be sold into private hands forever.
In doing so it is selling off one of its "crown jewels" i.e. a large plot of land right on Northcote Road. This can only be done once, once sold it is sold forever.
I strongly believe the council should look for solutions where it retains both sites for public use - at least on the ground floor level. We don't need more shop units on Northcote Road, there are plenty that are empty as it is. Why not rebuild both sites with a public facility at ground level? One side library, one side community hall - perhaps with a new playground open to the public at weekends as a previous poster suggested (how wonderful would that be). Flats above both sites and where the garages are should be enough to finance that, I'd have thought.
The current proposal seems remarkably unimaginative. Given it's proposing to sell off a valuable public site forever, I would like to see more done to persuade us all that that is worth the sacrifice. (Or preferably, as I say, a proposal which doesn't sacrifice so much public space).
To be honest I'm a little bit skeptical about where the cash raised will be going. I'm not convinced it will all be used to finance the rebuild. I suspect some may be going to cover funding gaps elsewhere so that Wandsworth can keep its "never raised taxes" badge. If that's true then it's very short termist and selling off long term public assets for short term political gain.
