Bedminster Green New details revealed for plan
AHUGE housing development in South Bristol will now not include a new railway station entrance – but will provide a new cafe for a nearby park.
The Bedminster Green project, which involves several developers, will eventually see more than 2,000 homes built on five sites either side of Malago Road in Bedminster.
The area, where 496 homes have already been approved, is a short walk from Bedminster railway station and Victoria Park.
Bristol City Council’s ruling Labour administration last week rubber-stamped a report setting out new information about the development, including an £8.3 million shortfall in funding for vital infrastructure, which it hopes to plug with a government grant.
The report included news one of the developers has promised to refurbish a “dilapidated” building in Victoria Park and pay towards a new cafe in the park as well.
It also revealed Bedminster station will not get a new entrance facing the housing development as originally envisaged, and that the owners of two small plots of land may be forced to sell them to make way for a bus lane and footpath widening.
Few details are provided about the new cafe, other than it will have public toilets and will be partly paid for by Dandara, which the council has named as a “development partner” for the Bedminster Green project.
Dandara is the developer behind plans for 295 homes at Little Paradise next door to St Catherine’s Place, 21 affordable homes on the Little Paradise North car park, and a three-level multi-storey car park on the main Little Paradise car park.
Those plans were approved despite fierce opposition from residents in September last year.
Dandara has also submitted plans for 339 homes on land the council refers to as “plot 5”, which surrounds three sides of the green dubbed “Bedminster Green”, between Malago Road and the railway bridge to Windmill Hill.
The report confirms five businesses must move off the land to make way for the development, and that the council will support them “wherever possible”.
One of these organisations, the Social Farms and Gardens project on the south-west side of the green, is to move into Victoria Park Lodge, which Dandara has promised to refurbish at its own cost.
The building, which the report describes as “dilapidated and not fit for purpose”, has public toilets and currently provides a mess room for the council’s parks department.
Dandara has also agreed to pay towards a new parks building to replace the existing facilities in the lodge, according to the report.
Social Farms and Gardens currently occupies the Green House, which local councillor Lisa Stone described as a “unique” and “valuable” building made of wood from South Bristol.
She said it can be “flat-packed” and moved, and asked whether it could be relocated to Victoria Park to house the new cafe and other amenities.
But deputy mayor Craig Cheney said the council had been told the “huge” building was “too big” for Victoria Park as it would result in the loss of too much green space. The council is carrying out a structural survey to see if the building is “sound enough” to be moved to another location, he said.
It was originally envisaged that Bedminster train station would get a new entrance from Whitehouse Lane to serve residents of the Bedminster Green housing development.
But Cllr Cheney said a feasibility study from last year found it would be too expensive, partly due to the need to raise the railway track to put a pedestrian subway underneath.
But Tony Lloyd from Friends of Severn Beach Railway asked the council to reconsider its decision not to build a new entrance at the station, saying it was probably going to be “four-tracked” by Network Rail.
“When extra tracks were installed on Filton Bank recently, both Stapleton Road and Filton Abbeywood stations were extensively remodelled,” he wrote in a statement to the meeting.