Bristol’s elected mayor has hit back at critics of controversial plans to redevelop Cumberland Basin saying there is more to the city than just “balloons, Brunel and bridges”.
Marvin Rees said that his experience of growing up in Bristol did not include many of the “iconic” sights that many residents fear could be lost under current proposals.
Bristol City Council wants to remodel the road network across from Ashton Gate to Hotwells and take the opportunity to develop Cumberland Basin with up to 3,000 new homes.
Its ruling Labour administration gave the go-ahead for the next stage of the Western Harbour project at a public meeting in City Hall on Tuesday (November 5).
Two shortlisted options and a hybrid alternative will be taken forward and a masterplan developed for what will effectively become a new Bristol neighbourhood at the western end of the Floating Harbour, in the shadow of the Avon Gorge and the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
A new road layout would replace the 50-year-old Plimsoll Bridge and Brunel Way flyover and open up space in Hotwells, Cumberland Basin and at Ashton Meadows on the south side, which could be developed.
One of the options would see a new road built along the side of the Portishead railway and across Ashton Meadows. A second option would see the existing flyover removed and the road re-routed through the nearby Riverside Garden Centre.
The council has refused to rule out the possibility of residential or business development on the green spaces in either case.
Liberal Democrat councillor Anthony Negus asked for assurance that the redevelopment would not cause “too much damage” to the “iconic setting” of the tobacco warehouses or take a “huge lump” out of Greville Smyth Park.
But Mr Rees said “cultural heritage” extended beyond buildings and depended on whereabouts in the city you grew up.
“When I was growing up, the bridge, the gorge, the balloons were an inaccessible part of the city’s life to me,” he said.
“My experience of Bristol as a kid did not come down to Clifton and Hotwells, we didn’t come to this part of the city.
“When I was at Radio Bristol, we called it, or I called it, ‘balloons, Brunel and bridges’, that’s all anyone talked about.”
He said that the Western Harbour project offered a “huge” opportunity for Bristol, which has a “housing crisis, a crisis of inequality and we have a climate emergency”.
The mayor also answered critics who accused him and his administration of shutting residents and elected members out of the project.
City resident Kim Hicks branded a recent public feedback exercise “misleading”, while Clifton councillor Jerome Thomas accused the mayor of making “unilateral declarations” over his ambitions for Western Harbour.
Concerns were also expressed about the membership of an advisory group set up to shape the direction of the project.
The 18 members of the Western Harbour Advisory Group were all appointed by the mayor.
Totterdown resident Suzanne Aubrey asked why the group did not include any representatives from the Environment Agency or English Heritage, given the flood risks and heritage buildings associated with the area.
Southville councillor Stephen Clarke Cllr said he was “very concerned” that there were no elected members on the advisory group.
Mr Rees said that the group would have been too “unwieldy” with too many members.
He said the council was working with the Environment Agency separately and that councillors and members of the public would be able to have their say via a wider “stakeholder group”.
Mr Rees was referring to a reference group being set up as part of the next phase of the project.
The group of individuals and organisations is to enable “local groups and the community to be engaged and informed about what is happening and how to participate with the proposed scheme development”, according to cabinet papers.
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