Evolution of Cardiff BayNews

“The Red Dragon Centre, along with other poorly connected, vehicle-dominated developments, are among the most negative of the legacies.”

Issues of ownership and finance and finding viable-mixed uses have been the greatest barrier to effectively reusing the historic buildings, “which arguably should have been the place where it all started”, she says.

But her strongest criticism is for the failure to engage and involve the communities in Butetown in the redevelopment.

“Despite it being a mere 15 to 20-minute walk along Bute Street to the centre, the psychological barriers remain as do negative perceptions of the capital city’s most culturally rich, dynamic and diverse communities,” she says.

Mr Gooberman agrees that the communities in Butetown and Grangetown have probably seen relatively little benefit from the development.

“I think there’s an element of truth in that,” he says.

“Many of the jobs that were created were for the benefit of Cardiff and the region as a whole. It’s perfectly reasonable to say that many of the benefits of Cardiff Bay passed by the people in the communities in the south of Cardiff.”

Butetown councillor Saeed Ebrahim says the regeneration did not meet the expectations of people in the ward.

“There was a big opportunity wasted in [not] joining up what was existing and what was new. Looking back to before the Cardiff Bay development, many people worked in the area,” he says.

A Bute Street store owner, who wished to remain nameless, said she didn’t know anyone in the area who works in the Bay.

“I’d love to have a flat down there, [but] we couldn’t afford to live there,” she added, highlighting the gulf between the residents of Butetown and those who inhabit the apartment buildings in the new development.

Mr Gooberman said that a redevelopment project is probably not the best way to solve problems of social inequality.

“You’ve got to look at education, health, life chances and all the rest. Physical regeneration isn’t going to do that, but it is going to create large numbers of new jobs.

“If you parallel that with investment in training, education, health and the rest, you will increase the ability of people in deprived areas to access the new jobs.”

Turning to the railway embankment that cuts Butetown off from the redeveloped area on the other side of Lloyd George Avenue, making the area invisible to the visitors travelling down to the Bay and forming a physical as well as a psychological barrier to the integration of the community, he adds: “Geoffery Inkin [chairman of the Development Corporation] said that the failure to remove that embankment was one of his biggest regrets.”

Some of the strongest opposition to the building of the barrage came from environmentalists who were worried about the loss of intertidal mudflats which at the time provided important feeding grounds for wintering wading birds, particularly dunlin and redshank.

The new reserve within the Bay, and the Newport Wetlands reserve along the coast, are often described as compensation for the loss of the estuary. In fact, neither provides suitable feeding habitat for wintering waders.

Dr Tony Prater, an estuary bird specialist who recently retired after several years with the RSPB, said studies in the years after the barrage was built had shown a higher mortality among redshank displaced by its construction.

By no means everyone’s assessment of the Bay is as negative as some of those quoted here, though.

Although conceding that Lloyd George Avenue is a “white elephant”, Mike Lawley, chairman of Cooke & Arkwright, adds: “In the late 1980s, industrialised Wales was in a difficult position with the virtual disappearance of the coal industry and a substantial run-down of the steel industry.

“Wales was not looked on from outside in a very positive light, but what Cardiff Bay did was make new investors of all types look at Cardiff and Wales differently.

“These days I never hear people talk about the groundwater, the sewers, the dereliction, the wading birds, the turmoil and change or the politics of Cardiff Bay.

“What I do hear are positive comments, especially from visitors, people in business and people abroad, all of whom now know of Cardiff and Wales, which wouldn’t have been the case 30 years ago.”

And Mr Gooberman adds: “If you look back at Cardiff 30 or 50 years ago, it was a city of two halves.

“You had the slightly more prosperous central and northern part, and then south of the railway line which was a sort of Mason-Dixon line of Cardiff, you had a neglected part of the city.

“That’s largely gone now. It hasn’t completely eradicated the divisions in the city… [but] the creation of the Millennium Centre, the developments in the harbour, I think they have acted to reunite the city.”