It'll certainly be interesting to find out exactly what the extent of this now apparently 150 acre site actually is.
^This pic of the 2005 port map shows, in red, MDHC's pre-Peel version of the Central Docks development site, an area which only totals around 85 acres even including all the existing waterspaces. If you include the big 10 acre square block of the Stanley Dock area (that bounded by Regent Rd, Gt Howard St, Saltney St and Walter St) you reach the 95 acre figure quoted by MDHC in the past but are still over 50 acres short of this apparently revised 150 acre number so unless someone has their figures wrong the extent of this scheme will be rather larger than the map suggests.
Doug Roberts said:
Clarence Dock powerstation used to occupy part of this area, there is a lot of land available here but does anyone think Peel may fill in some of the docks??
I'd say (and hope) that wouldn't be the case, Doug, at least not infilling on a grand scale. Bramley Moore, Nelson, Collingwood, Salisbury and Stanley docks, as well as the Clarence graving docks are all constituent parts of the world heritage site and so should be safe from any suggestion of infilling. The two most vunerable docks in that respect are Wellington and Trafalgar. Wellington isn't in use at present and isn't part of the WHS but is, admittedly, next to the Sandon water treatment plant and so might have a role as some kind of buffer area. Trafalgar, too, is out of commercial use (except for the canal link cut), lies outside of the WHS and its infilling would provide a very usable expanse of riverfront land. It's also a dock which, following its radical remodelling in the past (in truth it shouldn't really be called 'Trafalgar' at all), simply no longer possesses the same historic significance or physical integrity as the above-mentioned docks to the north. IMO, Trafalgar dock doesn't warrant the same level of protection granted elsewhere.
I expect we'll see some relatively modest infilling and quayside realignment work in and around the West Waterloo/ Waterloo river entrance area, the same sort of work planned for around Vittoria Dock in Birkenhead. In truth the construction of the Waterloo river entrance made a bit of a mess of that area and some judicious quayside realignment there could create some very valuable development space whilst still enabling the reshaping of West Waterloo dock back to its original (well, at least post 1860s) and more historically appropriate dimensions mirroring those of the East Waterloo branch.
Roll on tomorrow....