More than 60 Forest residents attended the meeting chaired by senior constable Wayne Bertrand at the douzaine rooms, with presentations from Andrew Merrett and Cheila Arruda from architects Lovell Ozanne, and Paul Nobes from developers Infinity.
Residents heard of the outline plans to build 85 new homes on the land around the complex, which houses the island’s main cinema, under a partnership between Infinity and the Guernsey Housing Association – 69 of them would be for the GHA and 16 for the private developer.
Mr Nobes said other GHA sites such as Kenilworth Vinery and the Data Park would not be delivered in the near future and the States had made huge mistakes in the land purchased in the last 10 years.
‘That’s due to flooding issues, sea defences and all sorts of stuff,’ he said. ‘That’s £17-18m. worth out on stuff that can’t be delivered.
‘There’s only two sites that the GHA have got on their books which they can deliver. One of them is the CI Tyres site, near Frossard House, and this is the second one. Both can be started and can be delivered within five years.’
He added that Infinity had got involved with the GHA to help bring housing projects like the one at the Mallard forward.
‘We’ve got the choice of going in two directions. We can do stuff like this, which is much-needed houses for Guernsey, or carry on with a third of our work coming from wealthy clients, where we’re building their £5-6m. houses. No smoke and mirrors, but we prefer to do some good while we’re doing our stuff.’
Mr Nobes said that the private homes on the site would look exactly like the ones built for the GHA.
‘I’m not going to sell 15 or 20 of my houses if they’re next to houses that look so different and that are built in a far cheaper manner,’ he said. ‘So the idea is that this has continuity throughout the whole site.’
The south of the site is outside the ‘main centre’ and one resident asked why the company was building on this greenfield site and not looking at sites such as St Margaret’s Lodge or the King Edward or Castel hospitals for housing.
It was confirmed that building on the field was allowed under planning policy. Mr Nobes said he would prefer to build on brownfield sites, especially the two mentioned, but planning had made this impossible.
Other questions from the floor related to parking, planting, building heights and drains.
The meeting had been amicable but became heated when the impact on traffic was raised.
‘Somebody is going to be killed at the filter,’ said one resident. ‘It is atrocious.’
The same resident asked for a show of hands on whether those present at the meeting supported the plans, but Mr Bertrand said this was not the correct setting for a vote.
Any representations need to be submitted to planning by today.
You need to be logged in to comment.