Working alongside the John Lewis Partnership and delivery agents the Hinton Group, IPaD supported the delivery of the redevelopment of the former Marketplace brownfield land site on the edge of Bromsgrove town centre.
The site was previously in use for informal town centre parking and offered a unique opportunity to extend the commercial shopping high street of the town. Phase 1 delivery of the scheme involved the development of a small Waitrose supermarket with open retail consent for the remainder of the site.
The cleared site was being utilised as a public car park for the town centre and part of IPaD’s commission was to undertake a town centre parking audit and derive a strategy for the potential loss of town centre parking going forward.
The constrained site required critical consideration of its connectivity for non-motorised users and given that the site represented an effective extension of the existing town centre retail offer, pedestrian access and routing was carefully considered.
A package of public realm enhancements was brought forward at IPaD’s recommendation to include enhanced pedestrian crossing facilities and bus service access to the site.
The overall financial contributions that were requested by the local authority towards road network/ junction improvements as identified as identified within the Redditch and Bromsgrove’s Infrastructure Improvement Plan were argued down to a lower level on the grounds that alternative highways schemes could be implemented at cheaper cost that would satisfy developer obligations as per national policy requirements, and that developer contributions towards wider public realm improvements should be offset against the total S106 contribution towards highway works. IPaD also provided advice on access and servicing to include internal car park layouts, which involved careful accommodation, and where necessary segregation of competing interests associated with multiple vehicle users including HGV delivery access, and both existing and future levels of on-site customer and employee parking demands.
