Follo development thread

[IceCheese]

Been thinking about making a thread for developments in my town for quite some time, but it's not like the biggest town you've heard of, and good projects are rare. Therefor, I've decided to make a thread for the whole of Follo!

Follo is a region south of Oslo, consisting of seven municipals in the county of Akershus. To most Norwegians, Follo is best known for their football team playing in the second highest division in Norway. Follo also has it's own TV-station, TV Follo.

Follo in comparison to Oslo and other suburbs:


There are 120.000 people living in Follo, where of ~35.000 belongs to the urban area of Oslo. The rest lives in smaller and larger towns, most prominently Ski (~12.900), Drøbak (~12.400), Nesoddtangen (~11.600) and Ås (~8.500 and ~2.000 students).

Before I make this into a Wikipedia-article, let us hop on over to the projects!




And, btw, everyone with any info about any project are welcome to contribute!!!

[IceCheese]

The fusion process of UMB and NVH/VI




In Ås we find UMB (Norwegian University of Life Sciences). In April 2008, the Norwegian Storting decided that NVH (Norwegian Veterinarian College) and VI (Norwegian Veterinarian Institute) should be moved from it's location at Adamstuen, Oslo, to Ås. This is (as far as I know) the largest project in the higher education section in Norway as of today.

This Friday (the 13th of November) it was announced that the location of the new campus will be connected to the old campus, north and north west of the historical campus. This concludes a heated debate, where most prominently a southern alternative was backed by many strong forces. According to this article, a comment made by Riksantikvaren (national preservation authorities) were the final weight on the winning alternative:
http://www.aasavis.no/nyheter/article4703737.ece

This is how the new campus will be placed, according to winning alternative BD:


This was the main alternative location (also my favorite), alternative E:


Read about all alternatives in this PDF: http://www.umb.no/statisk/fusjonspro...ngsplan_v2.pdf

An architectual competition will be held early next year based on this decision, if approved by the Ministry of knowledge before christmas, and if no one file any complaints. The whole project has a cost estimate of NOK 2,3 bio, and is scheduled for completion by 2018.

[IceCheese]

Expansion of Vinterbro shopping mall




Current looks:


Shopping mall Vinterbro senter is planning on expanding their mall. They want to build an indoor ski-center at the hill south of the current mall, with both a 300 meter long downhill skiing pist, and a 1 km long tunnel for cross country skiing with a biathlon range. In this package they also want to build a highrise hotell with spa and conferance facilties, + expanding the mall with some "plasskrevende handel" (basicly shops that reguire space).

How it will not look:


The highrise hotel will according to the regulations not be taller than 134 m AMSL. The height above sea of the plot the mall is today is 51 m, so the highrise will probably be around 83 meters tall (which probably is correct, considering 20 floors + tower).

The project has run into some massive opposition among national authorities, especially Riksantikvaren (national preservation authorities) and Statens Vegvesen (national road authorities), who claims the area is highly valueable due to stoneage settlements, and that an expansion of this mall is in conflict with national policies for less car dependency. A revision of the plans is in making, and I will be your resource for updates!