How Green is my Valley?

Climate change. Now the cash is in letting to students ...

When it came I must confess I was surprised for a few seconds.

On a day (a week, even) of high politics and financial bail-outs of staggering magnitude, would seem an odd moment to indulge in speculative ventures. Entitled "A New Look for Portland Green" I knew what it was about at a glance. So that is what they have decided to call the old paint factory site.

Someone will compile a list of all the fugded up heritage names and hand me down quaint titles that planners and estate agents reach for when they want to paint lipstick on a corpse. 'Barracks on the Green'? No... 'Billet by the Tyne'? No ...? One can picture the session as one black suited embalmer tries to out do the others in raking up a suitably misleading place name for a student ghetto. For that finally (?) is what is proposed. Green? Think naive rather than leather on willow.

Gone are the environmental office blocks. Newcastle has already a swathe of unlet offices, many newly built, others which have languished for years, so this decision to pull the 'eco-building' was inevitable (See photograph above.). A quarter of a mile away offices stand unlet and likely to remain so until someone realises the only way forward is to demolish them. Gone are the plans for five hundred plus "apartments", downed by the credit crunch and falling house prices (and potential profits to the developer). Instead what is planned is a "much needed" profit taking oppotunity to erect a barracks for students alongside the existing one on Portland Road and to accompany the many others which have been built on every available strip of land (including air space over the Metro Lines) between the central motorway and the suburbs.

The proposers of this wretched piece of money grubbing are Metnor Group plc "working closely with the University of Northumberland".

Worse, they are also reviving ideas first put forward several years ago (and the impetus for this blog) to "improve the facilities (sic) of the City Stadium. Open space is very valuable to the area and we are interested in hearing your suggestions on how it could be improved". Set alongside this self-serving cynical sentiment is a photograph of the City Stadium arena of such thudding ordinariness  it would drive a Methodist to drink.

Who are these people? Am I free to I suggest ways in which where they live can be improved?

Metnor and or the University of Northumbria are "providing Newcastle City Council with funding" to facilitate their bid to ghettoise Shieldfield and Battlefield. No doubt this will be described as 'planning gain'. There are names for this kind of behaviour, none pleasant. It will also make it rather more difficult for the City Council to oppose the development. As an offer it is at one and the same time demeaning and contemptible. 

The area between the central motorway and the edge of the Lower Ouseburn Valley has many exciting possibilities. It is an area in which the right plan could be extremely beneficial both to existing enterprise and future ventures. Much in this area needs re-development. The effort to re-generate this district requires sensitivity and imagination, neither of which are apparent in this scheme. It is a plan to insert into a small area a number of  large buildings with high occupancy figures creating a dense concentration of people in a finite area – or is it? I have long suspected that the intention is to build over the City Stadium site where possible. The previous scheme (see my early posts) envisaged a large car park and similarly promised to "improve" the remaining smigin of open space.

This scheme does not represent an advance on the noted successes of the Lower Ouseburn and by comparison, obviously does not seek to do so. It is a manoeuvre by a developer hand in glove with a University (University!) intent on generating yet more income from students. If any students have read this far: I am a former student and have relatives who are or were recently students and I am sick of the rackeeting to which the young are being subjected. This scheme is nothing about providing students with accomodation but everything about making even more money from them; and if a district loses amenity and a quiet lung of this busy city is fouled up as a result, too bad. Mine's a gin and tonic and here's to success! 

I intend to oppose this scheme and I hope you will join me.

Metnor have kindly provide an email at which one can record one's response to their wretched ideas for the former paint factory and adjoining open space: 

PortlandGreen@yourshout.com

Man with a Camera

I have opened a space on Flickr for showing many more photographs than would fit comfortably on this web site. Please take a few minutes to explore these. The archive can be found in the "Links" items.

I shall be fitting more archive shots of Battlefield onto the Flickr in due course.

Mean Streets Revisited

Today the news is all about the Credit Crunch and fears of a 'melt down' as one huge, vast even, financial mismanagement of the economy by bankers and financiers comes home to roost. In the light of this, development is a long way off for Battlefield. I now very seriously doubt whether the five hundred plus flats and apartments planned for the former paint factory site – is there a curse? – will go ahead. It is doubtful if the 'environmentally sound' offices due to be constructed on the old Reg Vardy car showrooms (see previous posts for images) will, either.

In some ways I am relieved. In others not so. (Quite apart from natural human decency in regardling the consequences for millions of people's livelihoods.) However, I would welcome appropriate development of the Shieldfield–Battlefield–Lower Ouseburn which respects the efforts that have already been made, enhances the character of the area and promotes a diverse useage. What is not wanted is a monoculture of rabbit hutch 'studio dwellings' and empty offices.

To continue ...

The route from Shieldfield to Stepney Bank, looking back towards Shieldfield. Just beyond the railway arch to the right is a pathway entrance to Battlefield Open Space. This area is rich in development sites.

One of the old, 19th century houses on Stepney Bank.

New build on Stepney Bank. The white painted building on the left is the home of Northern Print, an artist's printmaking workshop. Note the steepness of the roadway.

The bottom of Stepney Bank. The pale green ended building is a public house (pub) and beyond it is the entrance to Byker City Farm, one of the original pathfinder ventures in the Lower Ouseburn's regeneration in the late 20th century.

Another pioneer of the 'new' Lower Ouseburn was the Stepney Bank Riding Stables who have been providing opportunities for inner city kids to have access to horses and horse riding for decades. This view includes their marvellous new indoor facility (right). Peeping over the top of the nearest building is the 'staircase' of the National Centre for the Children's Book, 'Seven Stories', an important new cultural site in the region for book illustration and the celebration of children's literature. 

To come: More on the potential in the Shieldfield–Battlefield–Ouseburn area for a mix of open space, recreation, work and living.

A View from the Bridge

In recent decades areas of cities which were overlooked or simply remaindered by departed activities such as London's dock lands or New York's Tribeca have by master strokes of imagination been re-born as culturally exciting and commercially valued places for people to come and work, live and play. This model, whereby neglected commercial properties are given new life, often by arts based organisations, is so common today it is almost a cliché. However, when I once tried to enlighten one well fed member of the New Labour gravy train he bridled badly at the suggestion that his career in re-developing run down chunks of northern real estate with public money owed anything to 'perverts'.

What Mr 'Never Missed a Meal' failed to see was the essential creative background to city re-generation. His fat head was well stuck in the concept artists' aerial impressions of sweeping new zones spreading out across 'derelict' land which he paraded before the eyes of the credulous. The idea that there might be something there worth hanging on to – a history of place for example – was not on the agenda. Big vision means big profits, jobs on the boards of successful bidders and finally, retirement to the Caribbean where the sun always shines ...

Cities interest me. The great ones continually re-invent themselves, sometimes, as in Europe after 1945, by necessity, other times by the creative spur of a few less prejudiced minds. A good example of this is the Ouseburn, where already by the twenty first century some exciting initiatives had made an impact. Taken together with outlying areas there is here still a set of wonderful opportunities and challenges. In coming weeks I hope to celebrate this vision, one which depends on people, on a sense of place, of imaginative solutions to work, living and transport, one which enhances the environment rather than rolls everything up in corporatist ambitions.

First, some portraits of the place. These link together parts of Battlefield, Ouseburn and Shieldfield. 

Looking east at Portland Road. Battlefield Open Space lies beyond the trees at the bottom of the lane. This area is rich in development opportunities. Just to the right a set of offices, Maling Square, has given the area a new dimension.

Shieldfield Tower peeks over the Portland Road Halls of Residence. Just to the right, behind the shrubs is the southern extent of the old Berger Paint factory site, subject to a planning application for eight tower blocks of five hundred plus apartments. This road dips behind the re-developed building to the left. Part has opened as an Italian restaurant. Further down artists' and craftspeople studio spaces have been created. Other nearby businesses have had a face lift of repainted facades. The road leads beneath the East Coast Mainline railway a few yards away to Stepney Bank and onwards down to the Lower Ouseburn.

The railway bridges which are such a prominent feature of the Lower Ouseburn. The East Coast Mainline is on the left; the right hand tracks are those of the Tyne and Wear Metro light railway. A station was once proposed for this site and may yet be constructed. If so it would provide a very useful access point to the Ouseburn Valley and Shieldfield.

The area is rich in building land opportunities particularly for mixed use. Here the space on the left adjoins the new Maling Square office development. The building at the top of the photograph may well be re-developed as is or new build. Close by are a Chinese church and community centre and the locally well known Biscuit Factory commercial art gallery. There is also a large hall of residence here. This is a potential hub of Lower Ouseburn which together with a Metro stop could become a vibrant place to live and work.

A view of a new building going up just beside Stepney Bank. Many of the buildings down the steep bank towards the Lower Ouseburn are of some historic interest and reach back into the area's industrial past. Here there are stables and an artist's print workshop, Northern Print. Stepney Bank connects by an arch beneath the railway to Shieldfield. There is also access to Battlefield Open Space.

Coming soon: More images of the Ouseburn–Battlefield area and further thoughts on what makes the area such a special mixture of present experience and possibility for the future.

Ah! There goes Summer ...

The torrential rain has kept most of us off the streets and I am no exception. Here is one I made earlier, taken almost exactly a year ago it is proof the sun does sometimes put in an appearance.