from: Lawrence Green
re: Sell the site 3 March 2002

To The editor, Twickenham Online

Dear Sir,

I have read the letters from Mr David Kehoe and Mr Bill Henry in support of the Dawney Day, Twickenham Riverside proposals. I can hardly believe that there is anyone left who is so ignorant of the facts that they genuinely support this appalling project.

Firstly let me say I am a central Twickenham resident who voted Lib Dem in the parliamentary election and for Lib Dem candidates in the last council election so lets get the political nonsense out of the way.

The Dawney Day scheme will not bring much needed "commercial vitality" to central Twickenham. The depressing state of the buildings in King Street is down to the owner of those buildings who is none other than Dawney Day. In fact Dawney Day are not experienced developers but property owners.

The decision on Thursday was the result of a Lib Dem whip, Mr Brian Miller, the chairman, taking great pains to select a committee who would all tow the party line.

The project is of extremely poor quality in every respect. Do you realize that very few of the community gains are likely to materialize. The arts cinema will not be viable as proposed, it cannot be viable. The health club is private not public, we are to pay about a million pounds "opportunity cost" to allow the people of Twickenham to have partial access to the pool. In fact it has already been admitted that if the cinema and club fail commercially, which is quite likely, then there is no control over the type of enterprise Dawney Day will put there. Basically any business which will pay the rent. So the often mentioned Riverside nightclub/casino may well be the result of that if it can get planning permission.

We have just agreed to lease the area off for 125 years at £1 a year rent. That is we have committed our descendants for another 4 generations to allow third party commercial development on their riverside land.

The street parking, the pontoon, the toilets, the embankment are mostly now in Phase 2 which is extremely unlikely ever to be built since there is no commercial reason to do so.

The grey dingey buildings themselves are so badly designed that even the architects cant find a good word to say about them, who cares? It is very much to the architects' credit that they admit this is not one of their prestige developments. Dawney Day are quite frank about it too, they are in it for the money - end of story. It is only the council that for some reason, not yet clear to me, is spinning all this nonsense to get the scheme passed.

The arts theatre will not happen. It cannot happen for many, many reasons, just look at the plans and see for yourself. It is absolute nonsense to attempt to turn a small cinema with tiny toilets, into a theatre with a stage and changing rooms and no toilets in the space allocated. Mr Greenwood is mistaken about the value of this, it simply cannot work.

So although it would be very nice to have a cinema in central Twickenham again, even an arts cinema if there was someone brave enough to try it. And although it would be excellent to have a public theatre space in central Twickenham and a public swimming pool back in the area, this scheme will not provide that. It is using those promises to capture the pubic support but NONE of them can work from this scheme. Please look at it yourselves and see what this is really all about. It is a blatent commercial development with the spin of being a public benefit. And a commercial development in which we, the public, get nothing whatsoever although it is our land.

The commercial shopping area is also misleading. Now we hear that over 95% of the retail space is to be allocated to pubs and restaurants with the main retail shops restricted to a few kiosks and stalls along the pathway from King Street. How do the central Twickenham restauranters feel about this? What do the pubs feel about it? What will the residents feel about it on Friday and Saturday nights? Maybe they should ask the people of Central Richmond who have a similar riverside pub area.

When we as a borough are so deeply in debt that we cannot even afford to replace childrens swings, how can anyone support giving away a £6 million plus public asset without a guaranteed return for the people?

This project is financial claptrap in which, yet again, this council is being taken for a ride by a wiley developer and we, the people of this borough, will have to pay though the nose for their gullability.

The disgraceful state of the swimming pool buildings, as seen in the Twickenham Journal report is the responsibilty of the current council administration who have allowed this to happen. I agree it is disgraceful. Lets knock it down and sell the land to a real commercial developer, there are plenty of them. Then at least this virtually bankrupt borough will get the 6 million plus, that the site is worth in exchange for the luxury flats. That is roughly equivalent to our Social Services overspend last year. We can still control what is built there through the planning process.

This plan is extremely unpopular to all those who bother to find out about it, unfortunately the RTT and other council controlled media are not telling the whole story as usual.

Lawrence Green

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