Brownfield of Dreams: A Look at Idling Brownfield Sites

 

 

 

Build it and they will come: idling brownfield site, corner of High St and Church St

 

Now being used as one of Slough’s many impromptu car parks, this large expanse of land situated right in the lucrative town centre has been languishing in development limbo for a number of years. The planning permissions, currently collecting cyber dust on Slough council’s website, promise a massive multi-faceted, multi-storeyed development of retail, office, hotel and residential space, but not a brick has been laid.

 

This site, and a good few others like it dotted around town, are perfect examples of the problem of idling brownfield sites in urban areas where housing and other provisions are running at a shortage.

The swiftness with which the developers despatched the existing buildings (including some locally listed survivors of Slough’s Victorian old town) is inversely mirrored by the length of time it has taken to move this plan on; the scheme was granted permission back in 2008 but has since applied for extensions. While the economic downturn years may not have been an opportune time to start a big venture, there isn’t any wider economic excuse why work can’t start now; after all, major work is happening all over the town except in these blots of cleared, static brownfield.

 

Elsewhere in Slough, public parks are being built over to provide houses and cruddy office blocks repurposed without exterior redesign as residential flats, while sites like this sleep in the sun. But these sites are more than just eyesores and wastes of space, they dishearten the resident; familiar, cherished scenes and buildings are demolished in a blink of an eye with no timely successor, implying almost a kind of contempt for the local, whose town is hastily razed but seemingly not important enough to be replanted. Annoyance at wasted land is more keenly felt when insensitive plans are being enacted elsewhere, ostensibly because of a lack of housing space, while massive, empty, idling areas taunt the local like gaps in a six year-old’s teeth. They smother town character and identity and spurn the spirit of urbanism; it’s like living next door to a neighbour who flouts a hose-pipe ban, making you feel a bit of a sucker for accepting the withering of your own plants while they ignore the concerns of the wider world and keep theirs lush and wet. Time for local government to get tough?

 

 

 

Time has been called on this old alleyway (as you can tell by the ominous white planning proposals pinned to the side), as it looks like the derelict plot where the Floral Arms pub used to stand is finally going to be redeveloped. This blog has mentioned the importance of shortcuts and alleyways before, so it’s a shame to see this one go-- as shown by the picture it’s actually quite a well-trodden shortcut, with no fewer than six people walking up and down it in the half-minute or so friendly-bombs took to get this shot. The notice gives a time period for objections to be made, but since when have local objections made a difference to the Council?

 

 

PS If anyone’s wondering what the story is with the derelict area where the Floral Arms and Nationwide building society branch used to stand, the plan is to build a four storey mixed use building with financial/retail units on the bottoms and flats on top. (there was no room in the brief for one of Slough’s original Victorian pubs, so the Floral Arms came down). The planning brief is from 2008, so why exactly it has taken so long to get things moving is unclear-- surely they’re not sitting on prime town-centre land merely waiting for property prices to rise?

 

 

PPS: Local legend has it the Floral got its name after a visit to the High Street by Queen Victoria, who was looking to buy some flowers and later approved the addition of a flower stall in front of the building. The pub itself was opened in the 1880s, and the stall survived into recent memory as a fruit’n’veg stand. The pub was demolished around 2006, much to the consternation of local drinkers as it had a late license and was often the only option after 11pm for those seeking further inebriation.

 

 

 

 

Cornwall House, High St, Slough

 

A distinctive little octagonal oddity at the end of the High Street. It was built in the early 80s and still displays that period’s penchant for tinted windows. It’s a quirky arrangement of set-back floors arranged in octagonal blocks, all built in a concrete frame, and provides a visual complement to the mildly Brutalist Slough Library building next door. From certain angles the windows reflect other parts of itself, providing a kind of hall-of-mirrors effect that enhances its visual complexity at no extra building cost!

After years as an office it is now being bafflingly redeveloped for residential flats. I worry about who will end up living here, as it’s situated on a thin wedge of land between the continuation of the High Street and the frenetically busy Bath Road– you can see in the pictures how the traffic converges around it. You could put up with this as a workplace– it’s centrally located, easy to get to, and you won’t be spending the night– but as residential accommodation it would be far from ideal. Nothing like the dawn chorus of rush hour to greet you in the morning! Also, in terms of air quality, any location on this part of the Bath Road must fall somewhere between the sulphurous fumes of Hades and Eric Cartman’s farts. Perhaps not the best place for flats?