Mo, Feb 20, 2006The Last Urban Renaissance
Last week Urban Renaissance held its final Forum.The budget's run out and this one was the last meeting with the community to inform and discuss the development around the Sundermead site, where also the promised state-of-the-art leisure centre is supposed to be built.
This time we expected to see some content to fill the Mayor's promise.
Elections are coming and we hoped that some positive surprise to diffuse the tension around the proposed closure of the pool might have been unveiled.
What we heard instead was that the works at Sundermead are already about one year behind schedule and that a leisure centre could eventually be built after the rest of the development is done - that means starting works in 2011 at the earliest, but there is no plan for it yet.
We also heard that there are no changes in the plan to provide a replacement for Ladywell that's 25% smaller that Ladywell Pool and this in spite of the substantial increase in population that the Town Centre development will bring in.
The Council's experts present at the forum didn't have a figure for that but agreed with us that a ballpark figure of 2,500 new residents could be a realistic forecast.
To this figure you have to add the staff and students of Lewisham College that is also due to relocate to the new development as well as staff of any additional retail or office space included in the development.
A smaller facility for an increased population. ...read more...