LETTER OF THE DAY: £60m city centere plans are not enough to revitalise Commercial Road
The new £60m road scheme will only leverage mass utility flats and downmarket stores. It will never become a ‘destination’ shopping/leisure centre.
It will just be a forest of individual blocks scattered around the vacant land, as has happened with the rash of student housing blocks and the notorious yellow ‘fag end’ block dominating the skyline.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdTo compare it to the gleaming skyscrapers of New York or Shanghai is beyond belief.
Commercial Road has no ‘quality of place’. It’s an out-dated old high street which should be used to create local housing neighbourhoods, like John Pounds off Queen Street, not multi-storey Grenfell Towers and expensive new road systems.
As John Tanner says, there is great potential to create a futuristic development at Tipner West which the £60m should be used for to develop into a new heart for the city designed to 21st century world class standards. The present proposal has missed the boat.
Jerry Bamforth
Sennen Place
Port Solent