The Glassworks

Really? I’ve not heard that before. Strange place for housing

 

The core building work in the busiest parts of the town centre is finished so these extra works shouldn’t really be much of a nuisance. I’d happily live with hoardings and building work for a few more years if it results in more improvements to the town centre.

The Courthouse car park won’t exist soon as it’s all being redeveloped. A multi-storey is being built to compensate for the loss of some of the spaces.

Midland Street needs to be used to provide access to the construction area for Market Gate Bridge. What you see now with the new junction isn’t the final finish, but it needed to be done to support the construction traffic. Work on site is meant to be starting next month so I’d imagine the junction will open then. Once the bridge work is finished the public realm on Midland Street will be finished in the same style as the public square.

 

That area is included in the strategy but it will probably be a few years before anything happens there. The concept for Peel Street is apartments rather than houses. When the council refer to ‘housing’ in the town centre, they’re unlikely to be referring to a new Avant estate!

The full strategy document is available to view online. I’m sure I posted a link to it previously.

 

One thing i noticed recently about the new gateway bridge being built over the railway is that it seems to cut across diagonal from the bus station over to the car park. Maybe it’s just me being ocd I don’t know but shouldn’t it cross the othe way so when there is football fans traffic they don’t have to them cross back over the road. It just seems a little silly to me

 

I need to look that up

 

I'm sure @Freddiel will go into this in more detail, but it is diagonal. They couldn't put it down as its Gala bingo land. It's a shame really, as it would much better on that side of the road.

 

I’ve always seen this as an issue I’m sure it was said Gala wouldn’t give land

 

Yes it does go the wrong way but that was done due to space. They did acknowledge that when they designed it and said that they intend to completely overhaul the pedestrian routes to the ground. Not sure what they intend to do though

 

What’s happening with the gateway thing where the Dev was ?

 

They're putting a mural on the end of the building and a few of the buildings around the cinema (including it) applied to replace their shop fronts completely using council money. That's about as far as they've got I think

 

Ah thanks for that. I was looking at it in the glassworks leasing image and thinking to myself it just looks so wrong

 

Yes it is diagonal. The bridge ‘lands’ in what is currently parking bays in Market Gate car park. The overall cost and height clearance requirements will have had an impact on the bridge design and layout. I don’t think the council own the land on the bingo side and, looking at the bridge designs, they would’ve probably needed to purchase about half of that car park. You also have to take into account the fact that a bridge on that side would need to go over Schwabish Gmund Way and sufficient clearance would be needed underneath for tall vehicles using the highway. On the other side it only crosses a car park entrance so it’s not as much of an issue. We also don’t know what ground surveys were done. For all we know the other side might have been considered but then deemed unable to support the structure.

There are plans to add a new pedestrian crossing which will help, but it’s not yet known if that will result in a slight change to the road layout and location of the existing traffic lights, or if it’s just adding a crossing where one will fit.

 

It’s not all council money. The council received a grant of just under £2m from Historic England and matched that with £2m. The costs to demolish the building came out of this pot too.

 

Dolly’s TikTok officially confirmed their new unit in the Glassworks, quite a size actually with seating on 2 floors. Wonder if we are going to see another batch of units announced officially now as it’s been a while

 

Cineworld finally announced their opening date, 23 September

 

If you fancy a challenge, visit the Chronicle FB page about the bridge. The comments are rife. And Wrong.

 

Just as I said back in January when I created this thread … OK, maybe not the actual date, but they’ve been saying September for a while.

Lots happening at the moment with the majority of the restaurants and shops we’re aware of planning on being open by early Autumn.

 

I avoid Facebook completely tbh. Full of keyboard experts.

 

Home computer or musical?

 

Gone very quiet with announcements though. Dolly’s have announced their unit on TikTok but nothing from the glassworks and as you state I think there is a few that could be announced no idea why not though