Grangetown Tram Shed

From this photo it looks like Cardiff has lost another road!
With Westgate/Woods St/St Mary St out of action this was a handy road for getting from the Bay to Cathedral road, if they would spend money on improving roads when other are closed rather than speed bumps.

Cardiff seems to be increasingly split in 4 quadrants, by the Taff, the Rail line and bus only centre.

There is a car in that photo! That route can be a bit of a nightmare - particularly turning right onto Neville street. Maybe they'll do something about the junction as part of the scheme.

Pendyris Street is used as a rat run and needs to be sorted out. Surely there is enough room for where Pendyris Street meets Clare Road, as well as Court Road, for a mini-roundabout to alleviate traffic of sorts? The zebra crossing is ludicrously located on that part of Clare Road as well and is a serious RTA waiting to happen!

/Nimby rant

The application has gone in. It looks really good. Here are the renders -

http://planning.cardiff.gov.uk/online-a ... 639666.pdf

I wonder if this will entice people in the city centre to venture over the river and if so if it will see Tudor Street becoming a bit more vibrant?

Overspill is inevitable. This will stretch-out the centre. I think it's a really exciting time to be in Cardiff.

Hopefully the houses on Tudor St will become more desirable (close to the proposed BBC offices).

Overspill is inevitable. This will stretch-out the centre. I think it's a really exciting time to be in Cardiff.

True - the only pity is that the old Avana Bakery site has been occupied by crappy student housing. That's going to be a bit of a barrier.

I'm also guessing that the value of the Hancocks / Brains brewery site is going to increase pretty rapidly. Brains bought it from Bass for peanuts. I think it's a matter of time before Brains cash in and look to moving the brewery out of the city centre.

Project Website

http://tramshed.net/

Apologies I've not really been following. Is this a chapter for strangetown

Apologies I've not really been following. Is this a chapter for strangetown

Sort of and sort of not. As I understand it, there's no public money involved in the scheme - at this stage at least. It's a privately funded development with the loft appartments / incubators funding the public areas. I presume, but don't know, that the site was more or less gifted to the developer by the council in order to make the scheme work financially.

The developers are local - the same people who've delivered some pretty impressive schemes such as the Methodist Church in Penarth.

I can see how the deal works in terms of the development. What's not clear to me is who's going to run the public areas when the development is complete and whether they will require some sort of income stream from the public purse.

It wouldn't surprise me if it ended up being run by Chapter which is a pretty sharp business operator these days. The one thing Chapter lacks is a large, flexible performance space - which is exactly what this provides and the incubator units are very similar to Chapter's Market House building which has a long waiting list for space.

It's strange how a weird seventies hippy experiment has evolved into an important economic driver for the city.

It's strange how a weird seventies hippy experiment has evolved into an important economic driver for the city.

I wouldn't go that far. It's marginal right - the economic output associated with it, even if you include all the indirect effects will be pretty small beer. "Big Drivers" for Cardiff are people like Admiral, or L&G, or Deloitte, or Tesco, even the WMC. Chapter is still a local small operation. Doing great work, adding to the vibrancy of the city. But not important in any quantitative economic sense.