KNOWLE resident Paul Gilbert, of Langfield Road, gives his views on a proposed Waitrose development for the village.Click here for details of the plans and here for copies of exhibition boards, including maps (pdf, 1.5mb).
“In my capacity as a marketing and management consultant I have to review the efficacy and strength of many proposals.
Regardless of the emotive pro or anti supermarket arguments there are a number of significant flaws in the plans laid out.
The fact that there are so many indicates the plans have been ill thought out and may hide more flaws which cannot be seen from the exhibition.
Car Parking - From the plans and aerial photo there is a very small net increase in spaces if at all (the dimensions of these spaces appear to be the minimum and not sufficient for the modern large family car).
The store building itself takes many spaces and the layout takes away previously on-road parking places (the photo indicates widening of the road to accommodate parking bays at The Grove Road end of St John’s Close. Whilst this may well be a benefit, this does not create extra car parking spaces).
The new community housing will need to use some of the new car parking spaces as well those using the garages at the rear of the Nat West Bank which seem to have been built on and labelled potential shop unit.
Knowle is already ill served with parking facilities - these plans will make it a great deal worse.
Logistics - The road leading from Knowle High Street through to St John’s Close is very narrow even where is becomes two lanes.
Large vehicles have to mount the pavement. Currently such a requirement is once or twice a week but a supermarket needs at least two or three main deliveries a day!
This will create a bottleneck for traffic coming from The High Street creating severe congestion problems on the High Street.
This already happens very occasionally – it will be a regular issue with these plans. The Post Office, Waitrose, The Vaults and customers for Waitrose and Tesco plus others will all be using this road.
St John’s Close - The implication from the aerial photo is that through traffic between Station Road and Lodge Road via St John’s Close will now be directed to the opposite side of the village green to the development. The aerial photo implies there is plenty of room for two cars to pass and parked cars in this area. For this to be reality the road it will need widening, taking land off the Village Green.
General Observation - The aerial photo used is straight from Google’s satellite image of the area with the road map superimposed upon it. This image is well over 2 years old and taken very early in the morning, probably a Sunday (the car parks being empty, the Royal Mail vans parked up and the sun direction).
The potential shop unit next to the closed Wine Rack shop would be no bigger than a kiosk and suggesting building over garage entrances behind the Nat West Bank to make a potential shop unit support this theory, hence my concerns about hidden issues.”
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