Time up for car park
Council leader says Broadway will be demolished at the ‘earliest opportunity’
The Broadway (Nicholsons) car park could be demolished at the ‘earliest opportunity’ – after the council leader said it would be a ‘colossal waste of money’ to fix it.
The car park was closed on New Year’s Eve at short notice ‘due to serious health and safety risks’ and has remained closed since.
Last month, a safety inspection un- covered ‘significant issues’ with it.
The car park had been earmarked for demolition as part of the Nicholsons regeneration, which has stalled due to legal disputes over a necessary compulsory purchase order.
Since the end of last year the council has been ‘urgently working with specialist engineers and consultants to assess the condition’ of the ageing structure.
Royal Borough leader Councillor Andrew Johnson said this work made it clear that the car park ‘requires significant and hugely expensive work to be undertaken to render it fit to be re-opened.’
He said the council ‘considered’ the fact that it has remained open ‘for far longer than originally planned’ and is due for demolition as part of the wider regeneration of the Nicholson Centre.
“We believe that it would be a colossal waste of money to undertake these works only for it to be pulled down in a few years’ time,” said Cllr Johnson.
“We are now supporting the demolition of the car park at the earliest opportunity.”
He said Broadway car park is set to be replaced with a surface car park on a temporary basis until the wider regeneration work commences.
Another option is a temporary steel frame car park to provide a number of floors of parking space until the new permanent multistorey car park is built.
This will not happen immediately as the council ‘will need to prepare a detailed strategy’ to support this.
“We fully understand and appreciate the disruption this will cause,” said Cllr Johnson.
“But [we] wanted to provide as much certainly as possible, as well as make a decisive decision about the future of car parking within the town centre at the earliest opportunity.”
Further details will also be released relating to key partners like Shopmobility ‘in due course’.
The closure of Broadway car park is continuing to cause challenges for the ShopMobility service and disabled visitors, a meeting heard this week.
ShopMobility, which offers shoppers access to mobility scooters and other mobility aids, moved into a temporary unit in the Nicholsons Centre in January following the closure of the car park – where it was based on the ground floor.
Speaking at Monday’s RBWM disability and inclusion forum on Monday, vice chair Lisa Hughes, said: “Disabled people are unable to come into the town centre and do what they need to do.”
This was echoed by Dominic Manley, a wheelchair user, who said: “Now I rarely come into the town centre as it’s a real lottery of whether I’m going to get a parking space.”
Peter Haley, CEO of People to Places, which runs the ShopMobility service, said membership renewals had taken a ‘huge knock’ since the car park closed.
He added: “We are running at about 30 per cent of our normal demand which is a massive drop.”
At the meeting, Ian Brazier-Dubber, of the RBWM Property Company, said the council was keen to resolve issues surrounding accessible parking.
The forum heard ShopMobility could be relocated to the West Street car park, but Mr Brazier-Dubber was unable to give a timeframe on when this might happen.
Speaking to the Advertiser, opposition councillor (TBFI, Oldfield) lambasted the council for its ‘lack of foresight’ in letting the situation with Broadway get to this point.
“This car park should have been refurbished around 10 years ago,” he said.
“If it had been given the upgrades I suggested when I had the parking brief [in a previous administration], that would have given it 15-20 years more life.
“The response I got then was the same one as now; we’re going to knock it down anyway, so it’s not worth it.”
He said the parking situation has ‘become a nightmare’ with people giving up on shopping in Maidenhead because of it.