Truro city centre regeneration project recommended for approval
Plans include new homes, a university centre and leisure facilities
Plans to transform an area of Truro City Centre with new homes, a university centre and leisure facilities will go before councillors next week.
An outline planning application for the Pydar Street Regeneration Project will be considered by Cornwall Council’s strategic planning committee next Thursday (Feb4).
Planning officers have recommended that the plans are approved and while they have been supported by local Cornwall councillor and Truro Mayor Bert Biscoe and Truro City Council both also have reservations.
The planning application includes the development of 320 homes, up to 400 student bed spaces, up to 21,000 square metres of employment space including leisure, office, hotel, community, small retail, food and beverage units.
Under the proposals 112 of the homes would be affordable – 35% – and the new homes would be a mix of open market, social and intermediate housing.
The application is a major step for the project which is being led by Cornwall Council which says it is one of the biggest it has ever led.
There are currently a number of buildings and car parks on the development site including Carrick House, Truro Bowl and the Viaduct car park.
Cllr Biscoe said that while he supported the development site being completed in a single project he did have “a number of concerns”.
Among his concerns he states: “The cramming of development as proposed means that all the blocks are rising in height to find the volume to generate the return. This continuum has now advanced so far that the site is assuming a character of its own, leaving behind efforts and principles of integration. Talk about lines of view amount to glimpses out, rather than the neighbourhood feeling and being part of the greater whole.
“It is struggling to achieve linear return of financial profit demanded by the investor whilst abandoning the more important and sustainable return on community, environmental and economic value.”
He adds: “It is becoming less like a discreet reclamation of part of the town by the town, and more like a cuckoo in a sparrow’s nest. The site seems incapable of hosting the volume of proposed development without there being very challenging clashes of scale, layout and mass between the town and its geography. The site provides very little heritage value in return.”
Cllr Biscoe also suggests that, with planned works on the A30 between Chiverton and Carland Cross, it might be better to keep the Viaduct car park open until the impact of traffic in and out of Truro from Shortlanesend is better known.
Truro City Council said: “Approval recommended for the outline application with substantial reservations. Although the committee welcomed the line-of-sight views, it had severe misgivings over the massing of the proposed buildings (height and volume) and wished to see the larger buildings at the bottom of the development and the shorter at the top.”
Historic England has also said that it “supports the principle of the redevelopment of this site”.
But it said that there were concerns about the design of the development and the impact it could have on heritage sites in the city.
It said: “However, the proposals are for development across the site at a high density and to considerable height and massing. Whilst good design can, to a certain extent, mitigate this density, it will be important for your authority to carefully consider the impacts of this development on Truro, and on its heritage assets. These impacts may be visual – in the immediate locality of the site, or in longer views of the city and in combination with other historic elements such as the cathedral and viaduct.”
The council’s highways officer has supported the plans and states that the loss of car parking spaces is “acceptable”.
The plans would result in the loss of 695 parking spaces in the city centre – a mix of short and long stay spaces. Under the proposals up to 180 parking spaces would be provided in the new development.
In the report going to the strategic planning committee it states that “there is likely to be 100 spaces allocated to the residential dwellings”. The remainder would be for commercial and leisure uses.
Cornwall Council’s strategic planning committee will meet on Thursday (February 4th) to consider the application.