Sandy 4 St Albans

I went to inspect the latest plans for the proposed cinema development on display at the town hall today.

{mosimage}It’s a great pity that there isn’t a model, although I was assured that one will be ready next month.

The plans are an improvement on the single monolithic slab previously
proposed, but the whole development is still vast, apparently larger
than St Albans Abbey, and I will need a lot of persuading that they are
appropriate to such a sensitive city centre site.

We want a cinema.  We want city centre housing.  We want to restore
Bricket Road to some sense of urban life.  All those boxes are ticked.

But the whole proposition may just be trying to fit too much into one
pint pot.  As for the architecture, clearly it has been constrained by
the developer’s brief, but there is little sense that it has been
thought about in terms of the St Albans and Hertfordshire building
context.  The architects’ own website shows a proposed development in
Norwich with a residential tower uncannily similar to that proposed for
St Albans.

My instinct is that it will be back to the drawing board.