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The new centre will be partly funded by residential and commercial development – including affordable housing – on unused parts of the existing site.
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CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » General Edinburgh
Meadowbank Stadium
(45 posts)-
Posted 7 years ago #
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Looks, er, terrible! What's wrong with trying to make a sports centre look like a... sports centre!
Despite the current centre and stadium being rather stark brutalism and 1970s council-chic corrugated shed, it's set well back from the road behind landscaping and being a squat grey box isn't actually that offensive. Perhaps we've also grown used to it too.
The most important thing here of course is the facilities it provides and quality of construction, not the external cladding. Cheap and showy does not = bold. Doing something dull and practical yet economic and long lasting, now that would be a bold move.
Posted 7 years ago # -
"Doing something dull and practical yet economic and long lasting, now that would be a bold move."
See photos -
Posted 7 years ago # -
"Two public information events will be held at Meadowbank Sports Centre on Thursday, November 17 and Tuesday, November 22, between 3pm and 8pm."
One for the Consultations thread? I'll aim to make it to one of these.
Posted 7 years ago # -
"
Cllr Adam McVey (@adamrmcvey)
10/11/2016, 12:33
Have your say on the new Meadowbank Sports Centre by taking part in the survey: https://consultationhub.edinburgh.gov.uk/cf/new-meadowbank/"
Posted 7 years ago # -
Out of interest, what does a sports centre look like?
Posted 7 years ago # -
@himupstairs very good question :) Corrugated-clad shed seems to be de rigueur. Whatever you want though I guess.
Posted 7 years ago # -
"
As I look at these plans, I still worry about the footprint of sporting space we are losing.
The current plan proposes to keep an outdoor athletics track but with a reduced stand that will only hold 500 spectators.
We must allow our councils to be bolder in their plans and give them the backing to do it.
"
Posted 7 years ago # -
TODAY! RIGHT NOW.
Public Information Event at Meadowbank Sports Centre, London Road
From 22 Nov 2016 at 15:00 to 22 Nov 2016 at 20:00
More information about the event Public Information Event at Meadowbank Sports Centre, London RoadFind out more about the new centre and the masterplan for the site. You can drop in to the event any time from 3pm until 8pm.
Meadowbank Sports Centre
London Road
Edinburgh
EH7 6AEPosted 7 years ago # -
Popped in briefly while taking daughter to Brownies. Never seen such a busy consultation! Absolutely heaving with folk. Sports centre of course very busy on a weekday evening.
I chatted to one of the officers there, and gave feedback to him and in writing on the forms provided. I had particular concerns about access via active travel, permeability of the site overall and the potential for a through route/active travel corridor following the line of the former Clockmill Road.
I also expressed disquiet at the potential for tall, high sided buildings along London Road replacing what is a fairly open, green space. Not just the new sports centre, but also the zoning for a hotel/student accommodation with frontages along London Road where the current centre and car park entrance are currently. If the site opposite (currently a car wash and garages) were to be similarly redeveloped, this would potentially create the kind of urban canyon we see in places like Tollcross, Lothian Road, Fountainbridge, etc. Pollution buildup would inevitably rise as it has nowhere to go, making the main road more hostile for those on foot or bike.
I will also feedback online via the CEC consultation hub:
https://consultationhub.edinburgh.gov.uk/cf/new-meadowbank/
(Plans, drawings available as a PDF to download).
If you couldn't make it along, please feedback online too.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Just posted a marathon response online to the consultation.
Online consultation closes for comments 31 Dec 2016.
Posted 7 years ago # -
"
The Meadowbank redevelopment scheme at the heart of that dispute took another step forward this week with approval of a progress report about its demolition and replacement with a smaller complex plus a running track for a whopping £43m.
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Posted 7 years ago # -
"Ex-Evening News editor John McLellan is the Scottish Conservative candidate for Craigentinny & Duddingston"
You have been warned...
Of course, the Tories' solution is to sell land off to the highest bidder rather than keep it in public ownership and build what are effectively council houses. The Tories' solution is always to privatise public assets...
Posted 7 years ago # -
The Tories' solution is always to privatise public assets...
Except when it comes to roads, which should be funded and controlled by the state!
Posted 7 years ago # -
Of course there's no mention in John McLellan's piece about where the affordable housing that
North and Eastall of Edinburgh really needs will be built if you just flog the land at the side of Meadowbank to the highest bidder. And then the housing budget has to find more "magic money" as he puts it to buy land on the open market for... affordable housing.Posted 7 years ago # -
Edinburgh Council's housing revenue account recorded a surplus of £15.56m in 2015/16 - not magic money, actual cash in the bank.
(http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/downloads/file/8227/audited_annual_accounts_2015-2016)
Future receipts aren't magic money - it's rental income.
The Council can deliver 100% affordable homes on the site. What developer would do that? At best they could be required to provide 25% of the total as affordable homes and in practice probably far less.
Mr McLellan simply doesn't support the redevelopment of Meadowbank and wants to see it sold off to the highest bidder - to do with as they please (more "executive loft-style apartments").
Posted 7 years ago # -
There's 4 big-ish developments of flats going on right now within shouting distance of Meadowbank, all on brownfield sites. These are the former Thyne's printing works on Marionville Road, Urbane Den on the Lochend Butterfly, "Imperial Heights" (I kid ye not) on part of the Abbeyhill Industrial Estate and a scheme on some wasteland at Sunnybank.
The latter is the only one of these schemes that includes affordable housing, and this is a single storey added to a 5-storey block as an afterthought and thereby pushing the height of the development back up to the level which planning refused some 3-or-so years ago now. There's no reason to doubt that if Meadowbank was flogged on the open market to the highest bidder you'd get anything other than another development of aspirational/desirable/sought after/lifestyle choice/exclusive/insert superlative here type flats.
Posted 7 years ago # -
(Yes I know that's not Meadowbank.)
Posted 7 years ago # -
"
The news follows the closure of the Meadowbank Velodrome earlier this month, and will mean the centre being decommissioned before on-site inspections take place this winter and works begin in 2018.
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Posted 6 years ago # -
Craigentinny & Meadowbank Community Council, with Northfield & Willowbrae Community Council, are holding a couple of meetings in St. Margaret's House about the Meadowbank redevelopment plans.
- Drop in, Tuesday 20th, 2:00-4:00pm
- Meeting, Tuesday 27th, 7:30pm
(Friendface Event Link)There's a small (but dedicated) cycling sub-group in the N&W CC, so if anyone has any transport related comments I can pass them on.
Posted 6 years ago # -
@urchaidh, you have PM.
Posted 6 years ago # -
You can see the drawings and plans on the CEC website. As per usual for the planning website you have to wade through loads of documents to get the overall picture. They don't make it easy to review this stuff.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Incidentally the expiry date for public comments is the 23rd of February according to the site - next Friday - so don't hang around !
Posted 6 years ago # -
@Snowy: They don't make it easy to review this stuff.
Blame the developers. All CEC do is put the documents they receive on the portal.
You could argue that it's CEC's fault for requiringall kinds of different documents but AFAIK they don't have much choice - there's a process that all councils are obliged to follow. Certainly I've not seen anything significantly different on any of the other council planning portals I've had cause to peruse recently, including south of the border.
I think the idea of having a common process everywhere is to make things easier for developers. And with that, I shall refrain from further comment...
Posted 6 years ago # -
“
Comments left by the public on post-it notes amplified the worries expressed at a drop-in exhibition last week and there is a very obvious clash between council policy to discourage car use and neighbouring residents’ cynicism about any claim that limiting spaces will limit the number of cars.
Nods of approval greeted the call of “cloud cuckoo land” when this was suggested.
“
Posted 6 years ago # -
So it’s about soccer then??
Posted 6 years ago # -
CEC are trolling us, n'est-ce pas?
https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/meadowbank-set-to-get-22-000-cycling-sculpture-1-4730560
Looks more like Obree's Superman position than Hoy, anyway.
"Linda Furley, of the Save Meadowbank campaign, said she had mixed feelings about the proposal. “I do really appreciate public art and what it stands for, but at the same time we’re being told there is no money for sport and we have cycle lanes just drawn on the road,” she said. “Maybe it could be used to make some cycle lanes instead of just having a sculpture.”"
Boom. Headshot.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Alex Staniforth, Green Cllr for Craigentinny/Duddingston, backed the sculpture plan. He said: “This is a dedicated budget for this sort of thing and I do think that’s important because it’s improving the local area. Art and culture make the area better to live in for everybody.
Ha. Arts Complex was an actual arts place at Meadowbank. Municipal sculpture be damned.
Posted 6 years ago # -
This came up at the Northfeild and Willowbrae CC meeting last week which McLellan, our local demagogue and master of clickbait, attended so he should know better. He tried, and failed, to whip up a bit of negativity about it, he came armed with picture which I now realise was no coincide.
This is proposed as part of the 'POLO' (Portobello and London Road) improvement plan which includes a range of measures to improve the environment in that area, including the changes to that junction.
Whatever you think of the statues (I'm not hugely keen myself) they would be funded through this scheme and the council can't (and shouldn't) retrospectively defund schemes such as this to sort out ongoing maintenance issues.
The CC took an action to look for alternative ideas that maybe provided a little more practical, as well as aesthetic, benefit.
Posted 6 years ago # -
I do find it deeply ironic, to say the least, that a 'monument' to cycling is funded while the velodrome that inspired it faces the wreckers ball.
On the other hand I'm very wary of the Philistine argument that culture shouldn't be funded because (insert other deserving cause here e.g. potholes, NHS, cycle lanes, kids' play area, etc.).
Not everything in life should be purely utilitarian.
Posted 6 years ago #
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