A year after the first residents moved into the new apartments next to the Old Gaol, work has begun on refurbishment of the buildings on Bridge Street …
including: the Old Police Station, the one time tourist office and music centre, and some cottages.
The Old Gaol itself will then be converted into 10 rented apartments, with groundfloor restaurants and riverside gardens for the public.
The Abingdon Bridge young people’s centre will move into part of the Old Police Station from one of the cottages.
Hooray! However this is the bit where it will be important to make sure that Cranborne stick to their promises about public access – also about incorporating some form of recognition of the history of the building into the public area on the ground floor. Oakman Inns have set the bar high for this in their redevlopment of the Crown & Thistle – lets hope CH match them.
I was beginning to wonder if the long-promised shops would ever appear. At the rate the development is going they might think about them in 5 years time.
The area does look a lot better, especially now that the Crown and Thistle has re-opened, and the Nags head been revamped so well. The only downside is the green skips that have been dumped on the pavement on Bridge Street since 2007. Residents have tried to get these eyesores and health hazzards moved, but have been unable to get anything done, as the VOWH/Highways agency keep passing the buck and unwilling to do anything. A huge let down to Abingdon.
A couple of days ago I parked my car next to them, they look revolting and smelt even worse.
They are the first things visitors see when they come over the bridge. They are are an eyesore and a bad advert for Abingdon, the Council should do something about them!
I think the bins belong to the take away shops , u could try asking them to move their bins somewhere more suitable
The access to East St Helen looks unlikely to be enforced.
The security gate actually has a sign about it along the lines of “no public right of way” despite it being in the planning.
As for shops, we have enough empty ones as it is. Do we really need more vacant units?
Internet shopping (the root course) is not going to go away.
***cause even.
…the root cause isn’t the internet; it’s skewed planning rules in favour of out of town large, convenient, easy retail meccas – mainly supermarkets, against counter productive, unfair, out of date, behind the curve, slow to react, expensive, inconvenient policy towards town centres.
But i take your point and agree with the sentiment.
Town centres do not (and shamefully will appear to now never) be able to compete on a level playing field with out of town areas, and so will continue to decline.
Decades ago the competitions commision deemed that out of town supermarkets did provide a compitition issue…and that was a single out of town supermarket provided no competition, so the floodgates were allowed to open and more out of town supermarkets were allowed. This is why most towns have more than one out of town supermarket. THAT’s Competition!
Meanwhile of coures, whilst supermarkets provide what we want, when we want it…the highstreet has failed to up it’s game and so now also looses out. Is this due to shops “falling asleep at the switch”, or policy? Often it is both.
Just my opinion. And everyone is entitled to my opinion.
Has the town council decided that the Old Goal can be a gated development, or have they the spine to enforce the original agreement?
Hi Newcomer – the planning approvals for the Old Gaol were granted by the Vale District Council so it is them we should be leaning on to enforce it – although the Town Council can and should lobby them too.
But as always , Councils are mostly likely to act if they think there are votes in it. We can’t just rely on them to read this blog so do please get in touch with your District and Town Councillors and ask them what they are doing to enforce this.
PS provision of the link through from Bridge Street to East St Helen Street was a key part of what differentiated the Cranborne bid from the others so it is particularly galling that it is not happening.
Well I shall certainly contact the Vale, and I hope lots of others do likewise. I did not know about a proposal for shops on the development. I imagined that the idea was public amenities such as an Arts Centre and/or restaurants?
How does the locked gate affect the ‘supposed’ access to the River frontage?
I am quite willing to encourage a few friends (under the same impression as I was) to lobby the Vale. However , before that, could someone please give me the basic facts.
Cassandra, How long have you got ? The old gaol was a leasure centre owned by the vale dcm they said they could no longer afford to run it, so it closed, boarded up for a decade they finally decided to sell it. COG, was then formed (community in old gaol) the object being to form a sort of pressure group to lobby for continued public use of the building (theatre,arts etc) Eventually th vale put it out for tender, some of the spec being public access to the river,shops & restaurants etc,
During the tender process some really big names applied, Kingerlee was one but the most favoured was the Trevor Osbourne group, (they did Malmaison and the prison in oxford) there was public outcry when a shortlist was announced that didn’t even include the big names, so much so that 3 or 4 members of the public were invited to view the bids, but only on signing a gagging order!
It was then announced that Cranbourne Homes had one the bid, but the Vale refused to reveal the price, during the planning stages it was then found that Cranbourne had (un beknown to anyone??) purchased the next door building and grounds of Twickenham house.
One procured Cranbourne then succesfully renegotiated the price they wanted to pay, and once again this was kept confidential, also as part of the deal they were committed to build a number of social houses, wqhich according to Angela (the deputy mayor?) in an earlier blog here, they have not done.
So their plan was to build a new development in the grounds of Twickenham house (done) open the walkway between East St Helens and the river (not done) build new shops&Restaurants (not done) open up the river frontage (not done) and of course renovate the old gaol (not done)
It has still not been revealed by the vale just how much they/we are likely to get for the site, nor why so many of the obligations laid down in the specification have been ignored !!
they built the social housing on another site the old renualt garage on the drayton road, they were allowed to build over 2 sites….
Have Cranbourne paid the Vale any money for the OG yet ?
– last I heard a couple of months ago was that money had not exchanged hands.
Someone should submit a FOI request about the money. I thought that had committed to giving the council £xm and also opening up the river frontage and turning the old Youth Centre into restuarants
Whichever council is responsible (as there’s more than one it’s useful for them that they can blame each other) it’s about time that the public knew exactly what happened/is happening to OUR asset and OUR money, and what the actual timetable is for access and provision of the contracted public facilities. I had heard a rumour that Cranbourne had the amount it had to pay reduced after the original deal was agreed as the housing market had turned against developers. As I write, this is a rumour so I can’t comment on its veracity. The best way to stop rumours is for the public to be told the truth … all the truth.
Hi Newcomer, it wasn’t a rumour about the reduction in price, it was well documented at the time in the Abingdon herald etc, they won the contract by tender, then set about re negotiating the price !!
As the saying goes “Cometh the hour, cometh the man” Abingdons hour has been for the last decade, but unfortunately for us “the man” hasn’t “Cometh”
Will someone please step up o the mark and sort this town out once and for all, it’s beautiful place full of hardworking, well meaning people who are consistantly let down by short sighted, self interested politicians. !!
Thanks for that minky … so it wasn’t just a dream … the council is even more incompetent than I thought. I now wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Cranbourne have been given the nod to make The Old Gaol a gated development to help sales in ‘these straightened times’. Times so straightened that politicians now want to blow about a £million of the town’s council tax payers’ money on a 100-seater cinema which won’t be viable on an ongoing basis.
It’s easy to give away and spend money when it’s not your own. I really believe that getting a grip on the situation is beyond the politicians as they’ll just continue to squabble like eight-year-olds and throw our money around like a sailor on leave.
Goose time here in a week’s time – yum!
Whoops ten days – getting ahead of myself
Interesting to note the “no public right of way” sign at the East St Helen St side of Twickenham House has now vanished….gate is still locked however.