St Albans Civic Society  -  caring for the City

Proposed redevelopment
application refs: 5/2011/1805 & 1972

Objection by St Albans Civic Society

The Society welcomes the prospect of more effective use of an under-utilised prime site within the city centre, and the general aim of a mix of uses for this site. However, it would be remiss not to point out deficiencies with the scheme as presented - hence an objection is in order.

It is also relevant that major changes to the area around Drovers Way were proposed in the City Vision exercise. There is concern that this development may therefore be somewhat premature.

Specifically, the concerns are:

1) That this five storey development (a small plant room and lift shaft actually take it to six storeys) is too high in relation to the locality, especially in the way the front corner will overshadow the two storey locally listed building on the opposite corner of Adelaide Street.

2) Although the fifth storey (fourth floor) is set back from the frontage, it will be prominent in views from the opposite side of St Peter's Street and from the roundabout which forms the gateway to St Peter's Street. This presents itself as a deep horizontal band topped with guard rails, quite alien to the largely tiled roofscape and the street scene in the vicinity. Pulling this storey further back from St Peter's Street might not reduce the overall height when viewed from further away, and the only answer seems to be to lose this floor completely. This would still leave a 98-bed hotel, significantly larger than Antringham's proposal for the City Centre South site on Bricket Road. In respect of the size of the hotel, the comparison with the Premier Hotel site adjoining the M4 motorway in High Wycombe (section 4 of the 'Planning Statement') is arguably unhelpful and misleading.

3) The application presents an inadequate assessment of the visual impact on the skyline in distant views, partic-ularly from the west. Photographs are included (with trees conveniently fully clad with leaves) taken from several distant viewpoints indicating the application site but fail to superimpose the outline of the proposed building, so are worthless. The Society questions why this vital information been left out. The applicant clearly recognises St Albans has a skyline policy (Policy 114 in the local plan). There­fore this information needs to be available before the applications are decided.

4) The proposed retention of the facade of 71-75 is welcomed. However, the fourth storey (third floor) above the retained facade has dormer windows within a new mansard roof, but these do not relate to and are out of any satisfying alignment with the Georgian style sash windows of the lower floors of this locally listed building.

5) Although there is merit in breaking up the Adelaide Street elevation into distinct sections, the architectural treatment generally is bland and disappointing.

Neither the hotel parking or the access arrangements for deliveries have been considered in detail. However, if the ground floor retail space becomes a supermarket (a Waitrose store is rumoured - which would be a welcome boost for this part of St Peter's Street) there could be a significant number of lorry deliveries with consequential implications for traffic movement in this area.

Peter Trevelyan (Vice Chairman)

25 September 2011