Some positive activity around Waterlooville?

Waterlooville is struggling to survive as a retail and business area, but it is good to see three shops openning, two in Waterlooville centre and one opposite Hambledon Parade.

The two in Waterlooville are food/cafe units. One is a bakery/cafe selling Cornish pasties, cakes and drinks, the other is still being kitted out, but it looks like it will be a Pizza cafe of some sort.

Meanwhile, at Hambledon Parade the empty shops under the new Wellington Park flats appears to be acquiring a Premier convenience store. However given there are two existing convenience stores (Mace and McColls) in Hambledon Parade itself, it looks like something has got to 'give' and someone is going to lose out.

The other issue of course is that we have plenty of cafes and food stores already!

Oh and charity shops.

I'll have pictures and other details later.

Exploring Berewood and Wellington Park

A few photos I took during my recent exploration of the new housing developments.
Some mature trees have been left alone. The new school is in the background.

 

Looking towards Waterlooville through the Berewood Estate. St Georges church clock tower can be seen in the distance.

More homes on the Berewood estate. The drainage systems are found throughout the estate. Yep, the joys of moronic British 'political' boundaries means that these Waterlooville homes are in the boundaries of Winchester City Council 21 miles away, as opposed to Havant Borough Council 5.4 miles away.

Paths and roads have been created joining different parts of the developing areas. Many of the roads are currently blocked off until the development work is completed.

Another drainage system, new homes in the distance.

There is a bridge that connects Berewood with Wellington Park. Like many of the roads it is blocked off, although it is open to cyclists and pedestrians. The wood crash barrier is a nice feature and gets thumbs up here! Why can't all crash barriers look like this!

The stream as seen from the bridge.

Not all the Wellington Park homes look ugly brick boxes. These are boxes, but they have wood cladding. Why can't the whole estate look like this?

Wellington Park - Urban Park Project

A nice example of Pinus Pylonus behind the Urban Park Project sign.

There has been a lot of tree and shrub planting next to the Wellington Park housing development recently. This magnificent Pinus Pylonus is near the road and I managed to take this superb photo while the Sun was out. This isn't the tallest I have seen, but it is a good specimen for the area and it's great that the council and developers decided to keep it. You can see to the rear and right of the photo an area of shrubs has been planted.

More homes on Taylor Wimpey site

A failure of Taylor Wimpey and Havant Borough Council to create a hybrid and sustainable development has led to HBC councillors agreeing that no empoyment properties (other than shops) will be built at Wellington Park. Instead HBC councillors have approved the building of more homes and the councillors say there will be employment at the Dunsbury Hill Farm development.

It appears that developers and councillors are forcing the unsustainable developments of the past onto us today, they put little effort into creating new sustainable developments and instead fall back onto the idea of large housing estates built miles from any work place. Thus people are forced to drive to work which in turn requires the upgrading of unsustainable infrastructure to make it work.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-27442575

Hambledon Parade 2007 to 2013

Some then and now photos:

The hedgerow gone and replaced with flats. Some new bollards installed at the Sunnymead Drive entrance to Hambledon Parade.

Just before the work started on Wellington Park, I took some photos from within the fields.
The 2013 photo here is an approximation of where I was standing in 2007. I might have been further back from the pylons in 2007, or the lens on the older camera gave a wider angle view in 2007.

If I was further back from the pylons, then where I was standing in 2007 is now inside one of the ground floor flats.

Wellington Park

Had a look around Taylor Wimpeys Wellington Park and took some photos. This photo looks back towards Hambledon Road along Coulter Road. Fortunately the Oak trees on the right of the photo have been retained from the fields that the housing estate is built on. One thing the is lacking on the site is trees, the building work isn't complete yet but as can be seen on the left of the photo, there aren't a lot of trees planted near the homes. We'll have to see how things develop.

Some flats at the rear of the development. They will have a good view of Portsdown Hill, currently there are still earth works at the rear. I can't remember from the plan how far the site is supposed to extend back from Hambledon Road, possibly further than this point. In the background you can see the pylon cables.

On the other side of the completed estate looking back towards Hambledon road again. In the distance can be seen the strange flats with the chimney/vent in the centre of each building.

  

What is interesting is that some of the homes have Solar PV panels on the roof. Can't help thinking that 3 panels is a bit pathetic. Many houses now are having most of the roof covered in them. Not only that, why don't they also have solar heating panels as well?? It all seems like Taylor Wimpey aren't sure about what they are doing.

In the centre there is a small public green which is probably the best part. The houses on the left have solar heating panels and those next to them on the right have solar PV panels (electric). There are benches to sit on that don't appear in the photo.
One good aspect is that bollards are used to block off some roads from traffic, which means they would be safe for kids to use.

You can see from these photos that trees are largely sparsely planted and ornamental. Yes they are obviously very young, but I don't get the impression any big trees have been planted.

Wellington Park

Yet another change of name for the Taylor Wimpey housing development, once called Dukes Meadow and I think something else before that?? Now it's called Wellington Park, which is less subtle than Dukes Meadow. For a few months even the name of the developer changed, but now they seem to be happy with Taylor Wimpey: