We will be hearing from the
Senior Programme Manager,
Regeneration and Place Team about the updated
plans for Catford Town Centre:
· What are the plans?
· Is there anything to look at?
· How can we feed in?
· When will things begin to change?
· Will these changes be for the better?
Just a few of the questions we hear from you, on thisimportant local issue. Now is your chance to ask the council for an update!
Minutes:
Catford Town Centre Regeneration Gavin Plaskitt – Manager Place and Regeneration Team
Catford will change! We need to be part of it from the beginning. Senior manager from Regeneration and Place team is here to give us a brief. What’s actually going to happen
Update about
Catford town centre (the following notes
are best read around the slides delivered by Mr Paskitt)
Good Evening. I work and live here in Catford south. I would like to see this come about. This have moved forward recently so I am here to give you an update on what we have been doing over the last 18 months
Issues holding up progress. Bringing the situation with the south circular to a close. The Bakerloo line extension, how we can configure the development of the Catford Town Centre to ensure we maximise this and finally we have been looking trying to get the sense of how we can deliver some meaningful change to get the Catford town centre back on track.
The key sites we have been working on.
The stadium site has been redeveloped near Catford station. We have been focusing on Milford towers, the Civic centres and Laurence house. The areas that the council owns most of – but not all of. We have also been looking at Plassy Road Island and the Wicks and Halfords site. For a well-connected town centre an out of town style of shopping style is really missing a trick, those style of shops with ground floor opportunities only could be far better utilised. Turning Catford back into the kind of place we all want to go sounds improbable at times. How should the town be shaped, to deliver its potential.
The infrastructure that may come to Catford could affect other areas around Lewisham as well, i.e. the Bakerloo line extension proposal currently there is a business case to bring it to Lewisham but business case to extend this as far as Ladywell and Catford bridge is not as strong. By developing Catford Town Centre we can show potential for those areas to grow and provide new homes will make that more attractive.
Gavin gave some background around the history of Catford
The Council have carried out lots of urban analysis, working on the master-planners who developed the Kings Cross master-plan and have bought about a step change to that area and have supported us in this process. When we look at how the centres in Lewisham borough historically worked, Lewisham Centre was the biggest shopping destination, people went there to visit department stores and so on. Catford was used more traditionally for food and groceries and was primarily about entertainment. Catford was the real entertainment hub of the borough. It had a theatre, 5 cinemas, dog track, skating rinks, it was an entertainment destination. Only the Broadway remains and is not performing as well as it could be.
What important is the areas that should be kept, the Victorian ring of shops, the theatre, the brutalist Eros house is important. However the multi-story car park and shopping centre are far from ideal
The Council have been doing lots of work around transport in Catford. The vehicle movements into and out of Catford, the huge amount of traffic which runs through the town centre needs to be dealt with in the plans, not just cars and lorry’s but buses. The number of busses going through the town has to be accommodated. This of course touches on where bus stops go. We need to ensure the road works for all users. This includes the south circular gyratory
This is the 50th anniversary of talking about changing the south circular, the first plans date from 1966. The work stalled in 2012. We had been looking to resolve this position once and for all, essentially we were going to stick with the road routing and shrink the footprint but then TFL decided to have one final look to make alternative arrangements, realigning the traffic flow to move more vehicles through Catford quicker.
What does it actually do for Catford? The road network, this is a very wide road, huge, the area in front of the theatre is heading almost south so the main entrance of the theatre is hemmed in by the massive road network, this is the most inefficient. The hybrid scheme shown on the slide runs through the back of Laurence house, we can free up the area in front of the theatre and make more public space, there is a lot of the merit in that.
The road doesn’t have to be that wide, we can have a narrower and sleeker junction, this shouldn’t inhibit traffic flow too much
We have been looking at these key principles
Improving streets, quality of public spaces - a place where you might want to be, strengthening the commercial focus of the areas, more high street, less dead facades, remove things you can’t interact with and place the theatre at the centre of it and work on the theatre. Preserving the more important buildings and relocate the council offices, Laurence house will be gone in the future. It was only every meant to be temporary about 20 years ago.
We want to get a great network of streets, new high quality mixed tenure housing, retail leisure and housing, 2012 when the work was stalled, we showed where new housing units could be provided, we knew that the full potential hadn’t been realised in the past, option for how the sites might be redeveloped, new homes, huge amounts of space is currently given over to parking, but is not efficient a lot of it can be internalised. One of the things we found was there was potential for a lot more housing than previously realised.
There are some slides of aspirational public spaces extra high street retail. Lots of interest to provide high quality retail, there is also a demand for leisure.
Redevelopment here remains challenging, we do not own all the land, the council don’t own the Tesco site, for example. There are a number of financial issues, re locating the council offices is a burden. In February the Mayor submitted a bid to the Major of London to develop the area of Catford, where more than a 1000 homes can be added over a ten year period, there is potential for that so we submitted a bid for 40 million, we got awarded just under 30 million. It will allow us to deliver more affordable housing as part of the redevelopment. The 27 million grant means we can up the proportion of affordable housing, we also got money to improve resilience in the town centre, an allocation to improve the station environment, of 1.5 million.
The all-important timescales, hoping to reach a decision of the road in January next year (2017). We will come out to talk to you again early in 2017, we will be using those Catford conversations to talk about your ambitions for Catford, before we begin building the master plan and develop some specific guidance.
Finally the works, are not likely till 2020, if you are thinking about new retail, it will be 2020 at the earliest things will start,
There will be early intervention, hoping to get change happening on an interim basis, improvements to the Broadway theatre will begin next year, doing work on station improvements, as long as network rails don’t scupper this, 2018, flood improvements will happen from 2019 onwards
This is a quick whistle through I am very happy to have email conversations with you about more specifics of this.
Questions.
Q. Schools, complaints from parents already around shortage of schools in the areas, there has been mention of more housing but no mention of schools in the plans
A. The team I work in also deliver the councils school places programme, as we get into the detail of this some of this will reflect the need for schools in the areas, what type of people are coming here, who are they for, what will be the impact of school places, we will be able to define this.
Q. Typical architect picture shown on the slides - are the cyclists going to have to fight the council to get a cycling lane in.
A. We are having quite detailed conversations about cycling route provisions, segregate routes, make pinch points better. I am a cyclist myself, it is really important and will be taken into account.
Q. It looks lovely, but I have been to how many meetings over the last 50 years, seen beautiful plans, will this happen before we are all dead and gone. Maybe 6 planning officers have drawn up plans over 50 years.
A. These things are really difficult, they take time, decades even, when works start you should be looking at a decade of change, it is inevitable that it will start because value is going up, at the moment, Catford is barely viable, we are talking about a development that could be potentially worth 800 million to someone who wants to make a profit on that. We want a plan that entices developers to invest.
Q. Is there any provision for widening the railway bridge? Unless you do that you might as well not bother.
A. The short answer is no…we were expecting until the early part of this year some investment to be put into the bridge, that was supposed to strengthen the bridge and allow a more roomy route through, but that has been pulled. We lobbied for it intensively the bottom line, the 2 bridges both need enhancement if we are going to get the extra capacity over there. I wouldn’t expect it in the short term.
Q. On the Bakerloo line extension, when is the decision on that being made on if it will come to Catford
A. I am not a transport expert. The business case supports the development of the plans for the stretch which will run to Lewisham at the moment, since there has been a new Mayor of London, there is an idea that the extension continues through the rest of the borough, we need to show investment to create a new development, we hope to be able induce the new Mayor to change his mind and extend the tube through the borough through these regeneration plans.
Q. Pedestrian safety on Brownhill road is a huge issue, is there any work you know of looking at pedestrian safety along the south circular?
A. I don’t know, it is an issue for TFL we can look into it so talk to me after.
Q. If people people want to ask questions, who can they talk to?
A. You can email me Gavin Plaskitt direct, or leave me your details tonight and I will get back to you, I will be at the back for the rest of the meeting
Cllr Amrani finished this segment by stating that the Councillors and Council will work very hard to make sure these projects are a success for the future and that you are consulted - your voice and your contribution is crucial, Thank you Gavin.