Proposed new College building and Heritage Centre

Current view from Victoria Road, looking north east towards Salts Mill

Shipley College are currently consulting about proposals for a new Community, Arts, Heritage and Future Technology (CAHFT) Centre in the middle of Saltaire. It will be situated on the corner of Victoria Road and Caroline Street (see above), where there is currently a car park, public toilets and some waste ground. It would provide extra classrooms and exhibition space for the College; a new home for the important Saltaire Collection archive of historical documents, photos and artefacts; some kind of information point for visitors (sadly lacking at the moment) and some public toilets within the building. 

There was an exhibition of the plans in the College and they are available to view HERE. (Feedback is open until 2 December). The proposal is to start work next year (2023) and have it finished in time for Bradford's City of Culture year in 2025. 

The view of the proposed Centre from Victoria Road looking south-east towards Caroline Street is shown above. At this level it is envisaged as a 'Pavilion' with a lot of glass and timber framing. It has a colonnade around it and is set back from the road, in public gardens. 

This is how it would look from the east looking towards the shops on Victoria Road. You can see from this view that a substantial part of the build is on a lower level (on the part of the site that used to hold the old St John's Ambulance hut). 

This has the advantage (below, view north from Caroline Street) that the sight line from the village towards the main Salts Mill south frontage is largely maintained. 

The photo below shows upper and lower floor plans: 

All very well... I'm very much in favour of smartening up this rather tatty area in the centre of the village and a Heritage Centre for our UNESCO World Heritage Site is urgently needed. My main and significant reservation concerns, of course, the knotty issue of car parking. The car park currently holds 30 cars and is heavily used during the week and at weekends. There is NO provision within the plans to replace these spaces (though they are generously providing some cycle parking!) There is just a rather lame assertion that 'a survey' (presumably done on a wet Monday in the school/college holidays!) suggests there is underused space in the other car parks on Exhibition Road and at the rear of Salts Mill. If that was true (and I think it rarely is) that would assume that people might then seek out these spaces (and be prepared to walk). But you and I know that they won't do that. Instead they'll do what they always do and try and cram their cars into (free) street parking spaces, which are already at a premium around here. If I move my car during the day, then I often have difficulty finding a place to park anywhere nearby and, when I do, I then have to go out later, when all the students, workers and visitors have gone home, to move the car back to near my house. It's a nuisance, particularly if I have heavy shopping to carry in. It's also a nuisance when I have visitors and they can't find anywhere to park. So if this scheme goes ahead, I shall once again be badgering our local councillors, at minimum, to designate surrounding streets as 'permit only' parking, like much of the centre of the village.  

Views from Caroline Street

Just out of interest, the building that was once situated here was the Sunday School, the last of Saltaire's grand public buildings to be erected on Victoria Road, with a huge assembly hall and 25 classrooms to accommodate 800 scholars. Opened in 1876, it was demolished in 1972. (Anyone thinking the newly planned Centre will dominate the site and the view might think again when faced with this massive original edifice!)