The retail area in the 100-acre Edgar Street Grid development will become a “one-stop shop”, where people will park and return to their cars without visiting the city centre, a shopping centre owner has warned.
Urging as many people as possible to respond to a Herefordshire Council questionnaire by its deadline of August 8, Roy England, chief executive of Maylord Shopping Centre owners the DRE Group, said in a letter to councillors, decision-makers and those interested in the ESG development: “We are concerned that the location of the new shops proposed as part of the Edgar Street Development will fail to properly integrate into the rest of the centre and therefore damage the city”.
The distance between the ESG and existing city shopping areas, the poor quality links between the two, the “heavy weighting” of car parking on the new Cattle Market site, the barrier of Blueschool and Newmarket Streets and the siting of the proposed ESG civic area will create of two separate shopping places, he said.
The public are “very concerned about what will happen” at the ESG, while the council and ESG Ltd were paying lip service to what people really want, and have not properly publicised the August 8 deadline, he told the Journal.
“They have their own timetable and will not listen to anyone – they have an agenda to which they are adhering at all costs,” he said. “They want to develop the land because they own it.
“Integration of the two shopping centres means they must be brought together – there is a mandatory requirement in the council’s Unitary Development Plan that says integration must take place, but at present there is none”, he said.
Completing the questionnaire may therefore be the last formal opportunity for your views to be heard.
Hereford shopping is referred to on pages 33-39 of the council’s Core Strategy document, which will influence plans for Herefordshire until 2006, says his letter.
The whole questionnaire does not have to be completed, answers can be extended, and the document can be found at www. herefordshire.gov.uk/ldf, or via the council forward planning unit on 01432 383357.
