12:52pm Wednesday 28th July 2010
By Matt Smith
A GOVERNMENT minister has laid the foundation stone for Southampton’s biggest housing scheme.
Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, launched work on the stalled £500m Centenary Quay development in Woolston.
Developer Crest Nicholson will build 1,620 new homes of the former VT warship building site on the banks of the Itchen.
By the end of the decade, as many as 3,000 people are expected to live in a mixture of 1,472 flats and 148 town houses.
There will also be a food superstore, offices, shops, a hotel, restaurants and cafes and a “marine employment quarter”.
The development is expected to create up to 1,000 jobs, mostly through Ssuperyacht builder Palmer Johnson, which also has planning permission to build a new shipyard there.
City council leader Councillor Royston Smith, who joined Mr Pickles in laying the stone to mark the first phase of construction, hailed it as the solution to some of the city’s housing shortage.
He said: “It’s what is needed in Southampton. With 14,000 families on the housing waiting list we need to be creating homes for them.
“There’s a massive supply-and-demand issue and this will go some way to addressing that and create jobs in construction and breathe new life to Woolston High Street.”
A Government grant from the Homes and Communities Agency will support the creation of more than 400 affordable homes – around a quarter of the total – over the lifetime of the development, plus an energy centre to heat and power the site.
City bosses, who granted planning permission two years ago, say the site will be transformed into “a vibrant and thriving, mixed-use waterfront community”.
But the plan has attracted criticism from locals who fear too many homes are being crammed on the site and an influx of new residents will create a parking nightmare and long rush-hour queues over the Itchen Bridge.
The South East England Development Agency (Seeda), which is being scrapped by Mr Pickles department, bought the 31-acre plot from Vosper Thornycroft in 2003 for £15m.
© Copyright 2001-2012 Newsquest Media Group
http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/trade_directory/