Grosvenor Centre for the future – update
What have we been doing since we reported to you in October 2017?
Using information from the Neighbourhood Plan questionnaire, we have drawn up a list of necessary and desirable features, including square footage. This will help when we get to designing our ideal Centre and can also be used in funding bids – because this plan is going to cost money and all funding streams must be investigated.
We have visited other facilities both near and far to see how they planned and resourced their builds and what criteria were borne in mind. This has proved very helpful – though it is a great pity that the funding streams used by several other communities seem now to be much reduced.
We surveyed the site early in the project but are now about to embark upon detailed structural surveys of the Grosvenor Centre, to establish what state it is in and how that might affect plans to extend or redevelop the existing building and in response to visible signs of movement within the structure itself. We shall also commission a geological survey to determine ground conditions below the Centre. This information would be required whatever we decided to construct so it is better to have it an early stage in case it should limit any plans.
Finally, we have held early outline meetings with a number of architects, who have given very useful and practical advice to guide us in the next stages of our work. We now have plenty of actions we need to complete before moving forward to engage an architect for the project.