THE longer the Alumno Cultural Quarter debacle goes on, the more byzantine it gets.
Not only is the council proposing forcibly to roll over all the rights and privileges of the people who live and work to the north of the site to get at their own homes using a sledgehammer law of appropriation: but it is pulling out all the stops to approve unsafe disabled access from the already overcrowded car park in Priory Street to the new site.
And we now discover that despite the council’s assurances to the contrary, the protective covenants which specifically prohibit this kind of building on this site which have been pointedly ignored by the borough are going to be defended by Essex County Council, through the courts if necessary.
If that were not enough, there are also, apparently, papers in front of the Minister for Housing to look again at the whole legitimacy of the development procedures.
It was always going to be a difficult site to develop, and this was perfectly obvious to anybody with half a brain right from the word go. But the site is a particularly valuable one to the developers: they will have the value of it for at least 250 years to do what they like with.
The already overcrowded car park in Priory Street
The economic advantages regularly trotted out by Mr King, the portfolio holder for business, do not hold water for a second.
The site will not employ 300 builders full time. Three hundred and sixty students do not have £2million a year to spend, and if they did it wouldn’t matter what part of Colchester they lived in. And guests at a budget hotel do not spend £180 a day each on top of their room hire. I expect those figures come from the developer.
The lease agreement Alumno has with the council runs out shortly, and unless they’re able to solve all these problems the planning permission theoretically fails. But the council, in its infinite wisdom, wants to extend this deadline. Nobody knows why.
It really is time for the Cabinet to take their courage in both hands, look at facts not fantasies, pull the plug on this anti-social appropriation and develop the site in a manner more suited to the actual needs and of this community. There are plenty of ideas.
Dorian Kelly
Gladstone Road, Colchester
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