Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Selling city centre car park will be bad for business say traders
‘Traders are fed up with the council messing about with car parks and buses’
A city centre car park earmarked for closure looks set to be put on the market for new housing.
Council chiefs want to dispose of the Rosemary Lane site and sell it on for “high-quality development”.
It will mean the loss of 96 spaces, including six for business users, which the city council insists can be accommodated by spare capacity in the nearby multi-storey in Castle Street, other central car parks and the new Station Road West facility, once built.
Members of the regeneration committee will discuss the matter at a meeting tonight (Thursday), where they will be asked to authorise the disposal and remarketing of the site, but with the stipulation Rosemary Lane be kept open until the Station Road West expansion is completed, expected to be in 2018 but traders say shutting city centre car parks will drive out local shoppers.
Debbie Barwick, who owns vintage clothing shop Revivals in St Peter’s Street and also runs the Canterbury Independent Trad- ers’ Alliance, said: “We need people coming into Canterbury and we need to make them feel welcome.
“The car parks are not an astronomical price and residents need them. They are more likely to come in for just an hour, to go to the opticians or get their hair done – they don’t want to use park and ride.
“They don’t want to be here all day like tourists.
“Traders are fed up with the council messing about with car parks and buses. We will lose locals. They will be more likely to go to Westwood Cross where they can park more easily and for free.”
The draft Local Plan sets out the closure and development of Rosemary Lane car park in its entirety by 2031.
An initial plan to sell the site was agreed in principle in March 2012 and a preferred developer found after a competitive bidding process but problems with flood risk meant the sale fell through and the disposal was abandoned at the end of 2014.
The authority is now seeking to secure high quality development for the site, which falls within a conservation area and has an allocation of 20 residential units in the Local Plan.
David Kemp, the city council’s property manager, says the impact of the closure of Rosemary Lane will be reduced through the addition of the new decked car park at Station Road West.
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