Stokes Croft Gateway Enhancement

Public realm improvements

£340,000 is available to start implementing the public realm improvements in the Stokes Croft Gateway Enhancement Study. Public consultations were undertaken in 2008 on how this money should be prioritised and it was agreed to:

Improve street lighting in the side streets feeding onto Stokes Croft

These works have started and will be completed winter 2010.
 

Improve the footways

It was agreed that any improvements should be high quality, reflecting the area’s conservation area status, even though this meant less footway could be improved. The stretch from the City Road junction to 51’02 will be replaced with stone Spring 2010.

Works have also been undertaken to improve the pedestrian crossings at City Road and Jamaica Street.
 

Improve the City Road and Jamaica Street corner sites

A public meeting was held on 9 February 2010 when the designers of the City Road scheme talked about their ideas. The designs were then on display in Stokes Croft until 22 February and in The Architecture Centre until 31 March.

Visitors to the exhibitions were asked to indicate their preferred design and invited to comment on the schemes. The level of support for the various schemes would inform the decision on which design concept should be taken forward.

The consultation was widened to allow responses to be made online from 9 to 31 March.
 

The three shortlisted designers were:

• Dallas Pierce Quintero
• Eudaimon and
• Gitta Gschwendtner

Outcome of consultation

There was a fantastic response to the consultation, with over 900 people recording their preference. 64% supported the Eudaimon scheme and Eudaimon will now be asked to develop their design concept to submit for planning permission.

Eudaimon are a local company based in Hamilton House, Stokes Croft. Their design promotes sustainability and envisages a living "green" wall to provide a green backdrop to the space and help reduce pollution levels. The space would be covered by a "bike station", providing a purpose and welcome facilities on this busy corner.

There were many individual comments on the designs, but broadly they were:

• Dallas Pierce Quintero "Shadow House": People liked the elegance of the structure and the way it reflected the history of the area and profile of the old corner building.
   
• Eudaimon "Re-imagining 50 Stokes Croft": People thought this reflected the character and community of Stokes Croft, the fact that it promoted sustainability and local businesses and that the site would have a positive use. 
   
• Gitta Gschwendtner "The Green House’: People liked the simplicity and clean lines of this design in contrast to the busy and eclectic nature of the area.

Thank you to everyone who took part in the consultation.
 

Jamaica Street

An earlier consultation produced strong support for the removal of the advertising hoarding on the Jamaica Street site and the design brief included this aspiration. The Council served a discontinuance notice on the owners to seek to remove the hoarding. They appealed against this and the Planning Inspectorate has upheld their appeal, so it will have to remain. The Council are therefore not able to proceed with any of the short-listed designs for this site and will be discussing the way forward for the site with the community.