Tuesday, June 21, 2011

New town centre madness for Talbot Green

PLANS for a £200m new town centre for Talbot Green have been unveiled in a project which its backers claim will create up to 1,900 jobsAccording to newspaper reports

The retail element of the scheme extends to 33,000 square metres.  A leisure and entertainment quarter, covering 5,000 sq mts, will contain a multi-screen cinema as well as cafes, restaurants, bars and an 80-bedroomed hotel. In addition, there will be office space for local businesses, a range of civic and community facilities, residential apartments and town houses.”

For those of you not familiar with the area Talbot Green is a relatively small village in the Pontypridd constituency.  In recent years it has been all but swallowed up by two out of town retail developments which provide a great spot for some retail therapy on my way home from work but have also added considerably to the traffic levels in the area.
A development if the size proposed will surely turn a bad situation into an absolute nightmare.  The infrastructure simply cannot cope with such a concentration of development in one area.
And what of the effect on what is supposedly the county town – Pontypridd.  That is already dying in its feet, and the £10million that us being spent on tarting up the pavements and some shop fronts is a mere drop in the ocean and will do nothing to revive the town.
Interestingly the developers are a company called Scarborough – the company which some ten years or so ago put forward proposal for the so called Angharad Walk development in Pontypridd.  That involved grand plans for the town including large department stores, river walks, office space, etc.  Needless to say they never came to fruition despite gaining planning permission and the backing of the Council.
So what of these plans? Will they come to anything?  And what will the knock on effects be at both ends of the constituency?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just came from the exhibition in Llantrisant leisure centre - the actual development has 'bottleneck' written all over it, there are no serious attempts to encourage people not to use their cars, the agents were very dismissive of alternatives. It would turn the Talbot Green bypass into a 'high street', rendering it useless.

Anonymous said...

Living hell for people living in the area, I'm one of them. The place is already at a standstill at the weekend............god help us. The developers and the area council don't give a damn. Looks like there is a lot of free holidays being handed out somewhere !!