Eye catching (From Penarth Times)

Eye catching

CAN I put in a good word for the the proposed mixed use development on the site of gm2 house?

The top end of Plymouth Road is a desolate and untidy looking part of the town that has never recovered from the loss of its original function as a station forecourt in the days when Penarth had a decent railway service and a proper station.

The proposal is an imaginative and interesting looking building in a clean contemporary style.

It will provide some badly needed scale to the area and will close off the view as one comes down Stanwell Road or along Hickman Road with an eye catching landmark building.

The proposal is clearly the result of quite a lot of careful thought - which is more than can be said for the anonymous business park design of the gm2 building (whose only good point was that it replaced an even more dire grey brick office block).

Then there is also the banality of Cwrt Jubilee which came straight off the shelf from a well known developer of sheltered housing schemes.

As for the views of the Town Council, I respectfully suggest that in order to better inform their debates in the future, they get themselves some planning and architectural advice on why good urban design - even in an historic townscape like Penarth s - doesn t have to be a pastiche of what has gone before, and how the new and the old can be combined successfully to produce a more attractive urban environment.

I trust the Vale of Glamorgan Planning Committee will show better judgement than their colleagues on the Town Council and approve this attractive looking scheme.

Huw Williams

Windsor Road

Penarth

Via email