1,000 signatures reached
To: English Heritage
Save Portsmouth’s historic Arches
Please do not allow Old Portsmouth’s historic Arches to become low-rent Art Studios, cafes and a Brasserie. Residents are objecting to this development for the same reasons that any person would object to a proposal to plant a café in the middle of Stonehenge.
What we have now is an area of international repute and interest. Once it has been tampered with, it will have gone forever.
The buildings and their setting are far too important to allow such major changes to be implemented, especially when there is no publicly available business plan to review.
Why is this important?
Portsmouth City Council has submitted a planning application to redevelop the historic Point Battery Area of Old Portsmouth. It is almost inevitable that the area will lose its historic ambience and become just another café and retail outlet location.
The heritage statement for the ARTches details that: “The primary objective for this development is to provide an artist's quarter and creative centre in the vacant arches and ancillary buildings that make up Point Battery.”
Portsmouth City Council has not made the business case for changing this place of national, historic value into a low-rent market type venue with cafes and a brasserie. Therefore, the suggestion that the profits from low rent/subsidised units can go towards the upkeep of this heritage area, has no foundation beyond wishful thinking.
This is an area with immense history and of international repute and interest. Once it has been tampered with, it will be gone forever.
Local people are deeply concerned that there will be lasting damage to the listed buildings and their setting.
Old Portsmouth is an area already well served by pubs/bars and cafes. If the proposed new cafes and brasserie were paying less rent and business rates then it would be unfair on existing businesses who work hard to survive especially during these difficult economic times.
Please sign our petition and help stop the desecration of these historic listed buildings and their setting in the misguided pursuit of wildly optimistic commercial gain.
PLEASE, ALSO OBJECT TO THE PLANNING APPLICATION:
Use this link: http://idox.portsmouth.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=summary&keyVal=MTA36TMO5G000 to register and make an objection.
