New Plans For Cardiff Waterfront

It was supposed to be an homage to ‘The City That Never Sleeps’, but now it seems that Cardiff’s big plans for a Big Apple makeover will have to be toned down for a more realistic, if not so exciting scheme. Cardiff’s waterfront was to be lined with New York-style high rise apartment blocks and offices, until plans were axed as the extent of damage done by the credit crunch became clear. Now a more modest £200m proposal will be built instead.
“It’s a crying shame,” said the managing director of Cardiff-based marketing firm A Vision Network. “But times are tough everywhere and we need to be a little realistic about our city’s ambitions.”
Developers Greenbank Partnerships intend to build up to six-hundred residential apartments on the waterfront peninsula, adjacent to the International Sports Village (ISV) on the shoreline of Cardiff Bay. According to Welsh website walesonline.co.uk; “The centrepiece of the £200m Cardiff Pointe scheme will be two landmark towers – standing eighteen and twenty-four storeys high. Each will ‘cantilever’ out over the water, with a single column emerging from the water.”
“That sounds impressive,” said A Vision Network’s managing director. “That’s what I call making the best of a bad situation.”
This scheme is significantly toned down from the original plans for two-thousand flats in a thirty-three storey development costing upwards of £500m. Now the biggest draw, according to walesonline.co.uk, will be “a row of five-storey detached family homes overlooking the Bay”. Developers are hopeful these homes will attract the eye of the wealthy. In fact each of the ten five-bedroom houses being built next to the Yacht Club on Cardiff Bay is expected to have a £1,000,000 asking price. Director of Greenbank Partnerships, Jonathon Smith, hopes Cardiff Pointe will “recapture” those “high-earners” who choose to commute to Cardiff City from the nearby Vale of Glamorgan.
A number of three and four storey blocks comprising around 190 townhouses and apartments will also feature in the project, centred on landscaped parks. According to architects Scott Brownrigg, as quoted on walesonline.co.uk; “The development was inspired by European urban lifestyle,” and it can be expected to boast “a new public plaza with bars, cafes and possibly a water taxi station.”
A Vision Network’s managing director is eager to see work begin. “We’ll never know if the original plans for a New York-style waterfront would have worked, but if you ask me, what we’ll get instead will be a sight to behold!”
A planning application is to be submitted within the next eight weeks, and if approved should lead to work beginning this summer.
Source: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/cardiffonline/cardiff-news/2012/02/21/cardiff-s-...

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