Variety is the spice of life

I had a funeral to take yesterday lunchtime, then spent a couple of hours in the office. Excavation has begun on the site of new Admiral tower block, next to our office in the Motorpoint Arena Business Centre. Great mounds of earth have sprung up, and I guess must also be removed from the site by lorry. When the weather is kinder I must walk around there and see if I can figure our how traffic on and off site is being managed in such a confined space. If the SD2 redevelopment is anything to go by, working in such confined spaces is now quite an engineering art.

After an early appointment with my GP to complete a periodic medication review, it went earlier than usual to St Mikes for a lengthy tutors' meeting, to complete our review of end of year reports not covered last week. Then, after a break, our weekly tutor group meeting, which was spent considering the Church in Wales' policy on the disposal of cremated remains, in response to a question from one of the students. An evening Chi Gung session came as light relief after that sort of day.

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.