Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
I fear plans will lead only to takeaways and student flats
At the time of writing, I find it impossible to get detailed information about the plans for Kingsmead. The council has chosen a preferred developer, but on the basis of what detailed plans?
I have looked at the images of the proposal and it all looks very nice.
As with all these plans, there are planted trees, a few cars and an iconiclooking building.
But will the reality match up to the dream? I hope it does, but I have my doubts.
For a start, there is no need for a multiplex cinema as there are already six cinema screens in Canterbury that offer a broad choice of films.
What will be the retail stores? I fail to see how national upmarket brands will be attracted to this site.
Northgate is one of the most deprived wards in east Kent, matching the social and economic deprivation of the Thanet towns.
This must be a no-go for fashion outlets.
The only possibility I can see is that the supermarket Aldi may want to move because its success has outgrown the former Habitat building.
The site is too far away from the shopping core of Canterbury and will fail to attract high-spending shoppers, despite present attempts to improve Northgate Street.
This means any shoppers will use their cars, and so where is the parking provision? And what of the traffic congestion?
The only shopping I can envisage will be small retail outlets.
My fear is that at street level, the only shops will be a newsagent/off-licence, a betting shop, takeaways and fast food outlets.
And for years, lots of vacant units with graffiti-covered shutters.
I don’t see this as a place that will attract gourmet restaurants. Who will this environment attract? Will it be happy, friendly people taking part in a vibrant community life as implied in the plans? Highly unlikely.
In the evening it will be teenagers and pre-teenagers hanging around on their skateboards and their usual noisy antisocial behaviour.
Above street level, there will be the provision of even more buy-to-let properties that landlords will rush to rent to students.
The noise levels in Northgate will be even more pronounced as student tenants stagger back from the city centre in the early hours of the morning.
What Canterbury really needs is more highly paid jobs to reduce the brain drain of highly talented young people that leave our local universities every year.
Any plans for Kingsmead should incorporate a digital/hi-tech hub of the kind that has emerged in Brighton and other inner-city projects.
Canterbury has all the qualities to make such a scheme a great success.
But only if the council, developers and the local private sector have the imagination, the energy and the longterm perspective to make it work.
Twitter @RichardScase