The PORTSMOUTH (and area) thread

[Pompey77]

See what you mean about a theme park, not convinced that's a good thing although need to see it in person to judge.

[guyb121]

Might Go See It as Well

[SkyscraperSuperman]

Promising news about the Blade and the Tipner Regeneration, among other things:

Looking forward to a memorable year
http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/pol...year_1_3380410

The economy maybe struggling, but 2012 promises to be a special year when it comes to celebrating and marking milestones across our area.
With the Olympics taking place just an hour or so down the road, Charles Dickens turning 200 years old, and the Queen reaching an incredible 60 years on the throne, there are reasons to celebrate.

Two long-overlooked areas – Rowner in Gosport and Tipner in Portsmouth – are finally getting the multi-million pound regeneration they deserve.
And there will be iconic architectural marvels that will help to put the area on the map.
The state-of-the-art Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard is set to open in the autumn while the University of Portsmouth’s visionary Blade tower hall of residence will begin to rise above the city skyline.

We will be taking to the sea and air in two brand-new events – Portsmouth Air Festival and Ribex 2012 – featuring display teams flying over head and boats gathering at Gunwharf Quays to delight spectators.
Not to mention the return of a host of much-loved festivals.
There will be the Portsmouth Festivities, Portsmouth Kite Festival, Portsmouth BookFest, SouthseaFest music festival, Portsmouth Multicultural Festival and Portsmouth Music Festival.

And there will also be a time to reflect on the past, when sailors and veterans remember those lost during the Falklands War 30 years ago.

The News will also help boost the local economy this year.
Together with the Solent Local Enterprise Partnership we have successfully bid for £2.1m of funding from the government’s Regional Growth Fund.
This money will help small and medium-sized businesses grow and cope with tough financial times when we invite them to submit their bids early this year.
Editor of The News, Mark Waldron, said: ‘There can be no doubt that 2012 is shaping up to be an incredibly exciting year for our area.
‘With spectacular new events, huge national occasions and important opportunities for local growth and development, there really will be something for everyone.’

Twelve reasons which will help make 2012 a special year

DICKENS

Next year Portsmouth will join the national celebrations marking 200 years since Charles Dickens was born.
The great author’s birthplace is set to take centre stage on February 7 when the city will hold its traditional wreath-laying ceremony in the morning followed by a service of thanksgiving at St Mary’s, the church where Dickens was baptised.
During the day the BBC Big Screen in Guildhall Square will show Dickens films, while in the evening the New Theatre Royal will host a performance by one of the country’s most respected interpreters of the writer’s work, Simon Callow.
At the heart of Dickens 2012 will be A Tale of One City – the Charles Dickens community archive project which was started following a successful Heritage Lottery fund application in autumn 2010.
An exhibition of the collected material will be held at the City Museum starting in February, alongside items from Portsmouth’s collections and pages from the original manuscript of Nicholas Nickleby.
The project will also see new life breathed into the city’s Charles Dickens Birthplace Museum itself, including costumed guides, readers and improved educational facilities.
Actor Al Muir is even working with groups across the city to develop a community play based on Dickens.

FESTIVITIES

Portsmouth's festival scene has gone from strength-to-strength in recent years and 2012 promises to be the best yet.
From June 22 to July 1 the ever-popular Portsmouth Festivities will stage Great Expectations – a cultural, musical and spectacular tribute to the city’s most famous 200-year-old.
Then in August the Portsmouth Kite Festival will be hoping to build on the huge success of last year’s three-day event on Southsea Common, featuring an amazing range of kite displays, in all shapes and sizes.
Now in its third year, the winter will see the Portsmouth BookFest bring yet more world-famous authors to the city to promote literacy and reading. Those that come will be following in the footsteps of Jaqueline Wilson, Claire Tomalin, Chris Ryan and Mark Billigham.
On Saturday September 12 the city’s popular one-day music festival – SouthseaFest – will return with a host of up-and-coming and established bands that promise to pack Portsmouth’s favourite venues.
September is a busy month when it comes to events, with the Portsmouth Multicultural Festival on Southsea’s Castle Field bringing a massive range of international food, music and art to the city.
The Isle of Wight Festival, which last year featured the Foo Fighters, pictured above, will take place in May.
And last but not least the 2012 Portsmouth Music Festival will be introducing an Olympic theme for their 80th year. Organisers have also decided to mark the occasion by holding their final concert in the Kings Theatre on Sunday March 25.

QUEEN’S DIAMOND JUBILEE

Portsmouth is set to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in spectacular style next year with a host of exciting events.
A lavish public party will be held in Guildhall Square to coincide with television coverage of the national event on the BBC big screen.
The council will provide 60 tables and chairs for 500 people, with capacity for others to sit on the steps of the Guildhall or use their own chairs around the square.
Beacons will also be lit at Southsea Castle and Portsdown Hill as part of a celebratory nationwide chain.
They are among 2,012 beacons which will be lit by communities and individuals from Land’s End to Buckingham Palace.
And roads across the city will have the chance to host their own free street parties like during last year’s royal wedding.
The council has set aside £15,000 to pay for the festivities on Sunday June 3, 2012.
In total 27 street parties were held in Portsmouth on the day of Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding, and so far the council has had 19 enquires regarding Diamond Jubilee events.
Anyone who wants to hold a party next year can apply for permission unless they live on a road which is also a main bus route.

MARY ROSE

This year will see the opening of the state-of-the-art Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.
The new £35m museum is set to be ready for autumn 2012 – 30 years after the ship was raised from the sea bed.
It has been designed by architects Wilkinson Eyre – best known for the Millennium Bridge over the River Tyne in Newcastle.
Thousands of Tudor artefacts that sank in 1545 will be on display.

ROWNER

The regeneration of the Rowner estate is set to continue in 2012.
The £145m project will transform the estate in Gosport, delivering around 700 affordable and private homes.
Phase one of the project is set to reach completion in the summer when around 200 homes are expected to be ready to move into.
The second phase is already underway and features a Tesco supermarket opening during the winter.

TIPNER

Plans for the long-awaited clean-up and development of the east side of Tipner will become a reality in 2012.
The £130m project will include more than 600 homes, a new motorway junction and the decontamination of a large area of toxic land.
When finished the whole project will also provide 25,000sq ft of business space, 1,500 new jobs, waterside open spaces, a park and ride and a hotel.

THE BLADE

The striking appearance of the Blade tower will rise above the Portsmouth skyline this year.
Standing more than 300ft tall, with 33 storeys, the new university student hall of residence will dwarf the surrounding buildings and an academic building is planned to be built next to it.
Clearing the Victoria Park site began in September and is due to continue throughout 2012, with the building ready for September 2013

AIR FESTIVAL

Portsmouth's Air Festival will wow crowds when it hits Southsea this summer.
Seven hours of flying displays will feature the world’s only aerobatic formation wingwalking team, the Breitling Wingwalkers, who are lined up to star at the event, along with an old Royal Navy Sea Vixen and Spitfires.
Organisers are also hoping to add the RAF’s Red Arrows and the day is set to end with a pop concert.

FALKLANDS

This year will also see events to mark 30 years since the end of the Falklands War.
Hundreds will gather for a special Falklands parade and memorial service in Old Portsmouth on Sunday, June 10.
In Gosport there will be various events including a concert and a veterans freedom of the borough parade through the town, to the Falklands Gardens, for a memorial service on Sunday May 27.

BOAT SHOW

This May will see Portsmouth take the plunge and host a prestigious boat show for the first time.
The Ribex show, the world’s only boat show dedicated solely to rigid inflatable boats, is moving to Gunwharf Quays from its current home in Cowes.
It’s been heralded as the first step on a path for Portsmouth to host a major international boat show, more usually seen in Southampton.

OLYMPICS

The whole region is set to catch Olympic fever this summer and stage a range of events.
Portsmouth will take part in a 12-week nationwide celebration running from June 21 until September 9, which will involve dance, music, theatre, visual arts and film. The Olympic torch will also blaze through Fareham and Gosport on its way to Portsmouth as part of the London 2012 Olympic torch relay route.

CASH BOOST

The News has teamed up with business leaders and won a £2.1m grant to help create jobs and boost the south Hampshire economy.
The government’s Regional Growth Fund awarded the money following a successful News-backed bid by the Solent Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP). Bidding begins in the new year in the hope the money will help create at least 200 jobs.

___________________________

Here's to a fantastic year for the city of Portsmouth.

[guyb121]

Portsmouth’s entrance to be transformed by coloured lights
UPGRADE The Sails of the South and the M275

WORK will soon begin at Tipner Bridge to transform the entrance into Portsmouth.

New coloured lights will be put in along the bridge to replace the now-defunct white lights that currently stand there.

It is hoped this will create an impressive entrance for visitors and residents.

The city’s cabinet member for culture, leisure and sport, Councillor Lee Hunt, said: ‘This will ensure the entrance to the city is smart and the best it can be, which is so important with more and more people coming to see us.’

While the works take place, there will be lane closures on the M275.

On Monday and Tuesday the inside lane northbound will be closed from 9.30am to 3.30pm while some of the work is carried out.

On Wednesday and Thursday the inside lane southbound will be closed overnight from 9pm to 5.30am.

Nice Little News Article about Tipner, this project really seems to be going ahead now,
http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/tra...ghts_1_3396544

[Pompey77]

Originally Posted by SkyscraperSuperman

Clearing the Victoria Park site began in September and is due to continue throughout 2012, with the building ready for September 2013

I really don't see how, even if they started construction tomorrow, this can be a realistic completion date anymore. I think they are referring to the original planned date but things must have changed.

[chrisgoodall]

Is there still no construction work going on there?

[Pompey77]

Sadly not, still no word as to what the hold up is. Which makes the news' copy and paste reporting quite annoying, could they not make a few calls to find out whats actually going on?

[Pompey77]

Northern Quarter developer given new extension

By Joe Nimmo
Published on Wednesday 11 January 2012 13:26

LONG-DELAYED plans to regenerate Portsmouth’s Northern Quarter could be put back by more than 12 months.

But as more details of the proposals put forward by developer Centros were released, the city council’s director of planning Kathy Wadsworth insisted the multi-million pound project would be completed on schedule.

The £500m shopping, housing and business scheme was shelved in 2008 as the recession began to bite, but a new timeline was agreed in 2010 with work set to begin before the end of 2015.

Now Portsmouth City Council has agreed to a request from Centros to allow an extra 12 to 21 months if necessary, potentially delaying the start of building work until 2017.

The council said this is because the current programme does not contain any ‘slack’ to allow for delays outside the control of the developer.

Mrs Wadsworth said: ‘Our target was to open in September 2018 and I fully expect that to be met.

‘We are meeting Centros twice a month and can see how much work they are doing. This is now their number one scheme.’

But leader of the council’s Conservative opposition, Simon Bosher, said the whole process was taking far too long.

‘This has been dragging along since I became a councillor,’ he said. ‘The way things look my children will be lucky to use these shops.

‘It is extremely frustrating and disappointing that we are just letting Centros dictate whatever terms they like.’

Council leader, Cllr Gerald Vernon-Jackson, said he hoped the deadline extension wouldn’t be necessary.

He said: ‘They are asking the council to put a lot of money into redoing the road network so they really need to get their fingers out.

‘The Christmas retail results were worrying and the truth is it isn’t a good time to be building shopping centres.’

Cllr Vernon-Jackson added that of the two schemes Centros had been working on, the developer had opted for the smaller of the two.

He said: ‘The issue is one of quality. If we get a smaller scheme with a really good anchor then that is exactly what Commercial Road needs.’

Shopping list

The proposals put forward by developer Centros for the Northern Quarter contain:

· 47 shops

· Five medium sized units

· One huge anchor store, believed to be either a Marks & Spencers or John Lewis

· 44,000sq m retail floor space

· 5,000 sq m leisure floor space

· More than 1,000 homes

Rejected was a larger plan that included two huge anchor stores, more floor space and more shops, but the same number of homes.

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/loc...sion_1_3407874

Not exactly fantastic news.

[guyb121]

Interesting news about the Queens Hotel in Southsea

Buyer sought in plan to transform landmark Southsea hotel

A DEVELOPER is being sought to turn part of the landmark Queen’s Hotel and the land around it into flats.

Final consent is due over the next few days for an ambitious plan which would see the upper storeys of the seafront hotel, which have been unused since the 1960s, sold off and turned into 30 private apartments.

The buyer would also take on land around the hotel with permission to build two blocks of affordable flats and more private apartments.

The hotel would become a much smaller 22-bedroom facility on the ground and first floor with newly-refurbished bedrooms and facilities.

The scheme was first revealed in 2008 but has only now got to the final stages of the planning process.

Vail Williams commercial property agent has been asked to market the building and the land.

A survey in 2005 concluded the hotel was worth around £2m, compared with an estimated £5m bill to refurbish it.

Chris Cave, partner at Vail Williams, said: ‘The planning consent is for the ground floor and first floor of the hotel to be refurbished and kept as a boutique hotel.

‘We are expecting to get the final letter of planning approval imminently.

‘Next door to the hotel, on the right-hand side, will be 30 affordable flats, and in front of that, on the seaward side, there will be a block of 38 private apartments.’

The hotel is owned by the Manning family, who also own Clarence Parade Pier.

The second phase of planning, to build the block of 38 apartments, attracted objections from neighbours and the Portsmouth Society.

John Holland, one of its committee members, wrote to Portsmouth City Council saying: ‘We feel the proposed building is too tall for the site and will block views of the Queen’s Hotel from Southsea Common.’

The society also said its design was not in keeping with neighbouring Georgian and Edwardian properties.

But the plans were changed in the middle of last year to address some of the concerns.

The Portsmouth Society did not object to plans to refurbish the Queen’s Hotel itself.

The hotel estimates that once a developer buys the hotel and land, the work should take 18 months to finish.

The Queen’s Hotel was first known as Southsea House, and was a large home owned by Sir John and Lady Morris. It was destroyed in a fire in 1901, and rebuilt in 1903. Around 30 full and 50 part-time staff work at the hotel, which is in a conservation area but is not listed.

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/loc...otel_1_3464175

[SkyscraperSuperman]

A bit of news about Number One Portsmouth!

Might as well draw attention to this post - so, I have some promising news for you all! I emailed Robert Gamlen yesterday to ask about the progress of the Number One Portsmouth hotel. I mentioned that I was a 2nd year Civil Engineering student looking into Portsmouth's ongoing development and was wondering about the status of the hotel.

I received a response today:

Richard,

I was originally funded by RBS but they decided that due to the credit crunch they did not want to be involved. I therefore had to refinance it with a American Bank and this has now been completed but took quite a long time.

Rezidor the parent company that runs the Radisson Blu brand are the most likely operator but others are interested. I am in the middle of negotiating a build contract with one of the biggest contractors in order to get it built. The internal demolition has already started but we are currently held up by the gas board who are taking an age to remove a gas main before the major demolition machinery can be brought on site.

We have renewed the planning permission in December and hope to be building by the early summer.

I hope this helps

Robert Gamlen

[ill tonkso]

Holy le'fuck. When you text me mate I expected Core action on The Blade or something.

[Pompey77]

That's very interesting news indeed. Would be an absolute boon for the city to finally get this and the Jury's Inn underway. Excellent work superman.

[guyb121]

this is really great news :-)

[SkyscraperSuperman]

From the most recent issue of the Portsmouth Uni student's newspaper (lengthy article so I just photographed it rather than copy it all out):





So once again, the sprinkler debate has held everything up, now they're questioning whether the building should have sprinklers after all...
Sky Plaza, Nido Spitalfields and 17 New Wakefield Street - all either U/C or completed, yet this one is on hold? Do these other buildings have sprinkers or not, was there an issue with any of the other similar-height student towers?
Just build the damn thing...

[Pompey77]

Sounds as if the viability of the whole thing is in doubt. Although there's really nothing new here. We knew the uni was planning to convert Mercantile house to accommodation it was reported here last January, hopefully the hint that this is as an alternative to building the blade is just the reporter putting two and two together. The fact that Watkins removed their signs and the university is refusing to comment is definitely worrying tho...

[guyb121]

Bad News, Oh well guess we will just have to wait and see, realistically though, even if it does go ahead September 2014 Is a much more likely finish date

[Pompey77]

Also wondering if the fall in applications associated with the tuition fee rise is also adding to the uni and developers caution. 9% nationally, don't know the situation with Portsmouth uni.

[SkyscraperSuperman]

Nice attempt at rhyming...but no thanks.

[SkyscraperSuperman]

Oops, meant to edit the last post...too late now.

Originally Posted by Pompey77

Also wondering if the fall in applications associated with the tuition fee rise is also adding to the uni and developers caution. 9% nationally, don't know the situation with Portsmouth uni.

Yeah it's the same with Portsmouth. Also from the student newspaper:
"Applications for 2012 entry at the University of Portsmouth are nearly 26,000. This represents a drop of 9% on applications in 2011."

[Pompey77]

Somethings getting built at North Harbour...

Inchcape starts Portsmouth Porsche build

Inchcape has started construction on its new Porsche dealership in Portsmouth which is scheduled to open this summer.

The Portsmouth site on Western Road will be Inchcape’s second with Porsche, joining its showroom in Bournemouth.

The new site will occupy nearly two acres and will feature a 26 car showroom with roof-top parking, an eight ramp workshop and an MoT bay.

http://www.am-online.com/news/2012/2...-build/30455/?