Work in progress

This morning I re-stocked the fridge in anticipation of Clare's return from a week with Ann in Kirton. At two thirty, I collected her, in the rain, from Cardiff Central Station. I was caught out by the fact that since my last visit, the collection and drop-off point for travellers in Central Square has closed, and the excavation of the entire site of the old bus station has begun. It meant driving around the the south side of the station, already equipped with a stylish modern entrance and a much greater capacity car park. What's been done is a considerable improvement on the old facility in Central Square. Pity that getting there is just as much, if not more hassle than the old arrangement was. It'll be different again in a couple of years time after the new bus station and new buildings in Central Square are complete. For the moment everyone has to put up with a work in progress.

I am making an effort to document the redevelopment of Central Square in photographs, as I did for the St David II redevelopment, by regular visits to the vantage points I can find around the site. It won't be nearly as dramatic as the transformation wrought in Cardiff city centre between 2006 and 2009, but the reshaping of the city's central transport hub and all the buildings associate with it it will represent a major change to a landmark central site. I wouldn't be doing it now if it wasn't for the fascination with urban development which the earlier experience generated in me. Last week's trip to London opened my eyes to the resurgence of the economy expressed in the number of tower cranes and building sites visible in the cityscape. Over the past decade, the way I regard the built environment I am part of has changed utterly - and this has afforded me great pleasure.

As for photographs, I must get around to sorting and posting them where they are publicly visible. They don't show the wind and rain, or the hassle in finding a suitable vantage point in a busy environment. But they do tell a story of re-shaping places familiar tom people in their passages to work or leisure day by day, and one day that might be of interest to somebody new.
     

More city centre building work

This week Heras fencing has been erected enclosing the green space between the Motorpoint Arena, the Job centre and the St David's Centre East side entrance and car park. Work is about to begin on excavating the site to prepare for the construction of a new head quarters tower block for Admiral Insurance Company. 

Eventually, the building will gather their 4,000 employees from various city office locations on to one site. Hopefully Admiral will benefit from this and continue to prosper. The company is, after all one of the city's major private employers. It will result in there being even more empty office accommodation in the city. Cardiff has not yet succeeded in attracting many large new corporate business to make Cardiff their head quarters, despite the obvious attractions of life in the city.

Quite apart from the two years worth of traffic congestion that will be result from building in the middle of an area busy with visitors to the Motorpoint Arena and St David's-Dewi Sant, the city centre will lose a green open space in an area dominated by tall buildings. The flowering cherry trees planted there three years ago when the shopping centre opened will, we are reassured, be removed and replanted on other sites locally. I hope it's true this time. I was much aggrieved by the brutal treatment of trees in blossom bulldozed in the early course of the redevelopment of 2007-9. 

Photo taken 6th Feb 2007

 

Such measures contribute to alienating public sympathy. A blunt reminder that we don't own the city we belong to, and despite all the show case consultations, ordinary folk have little control over what happens. We are only allowed to come in to trade or consume - so long as we pay, and behave ourselves.