DERBY CITYSCAPE

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Derby's former police museum has been bought for more than £1m by Finesse Hotels. The company wants to spend another £2m on transforming the building, which it hopes would be ready to open for business by next summer. The hotel would have 48 bedrooms, a 120-cover brasserie, four conference rooms, lounges and a cocktail bar. James Blick, managing director of Finesse, said the St Mary's Gate building would be every bit as impressive as the company's boutique Lace Market Hotel in Nottingham.

He said, "We want to create a hotel that oozes quality. We want people to walk in and be totally overwhelmed. One of the things which attracted me to invest in Derby was the amount of development going on around the city. It is clearly moving forwards, and there's no reason why it shouldn't have more than one high-quality hotel." Mr Blick said the new hotel would actually be of five-star quality, although city centre hotels struggled to achieve that status because they could not provide leisure facilities such as golf courses.

He has grand plans for the building and aims to retain a sweeping staircase and a stained glass window. A former vault would be opened, glazed and transformed into a wine cellar. Rooms would be kitted out with all mod cons, including plasma-screen televisions and guests would be greeted by a concierge who would park their car before bringing in their luggage, while another member of staff would lead customers inside. There would be 10 parking spaces, although these would be reserved for VIPs. (Source: Derby Evening Telegraph, Sep/06)

Cityscape is all about growth. Growth in businesses, homes, leisure facilities and tourism - and more people means more traffic. The Cityscape master plan recognises that transport infrastructure is key to the delivery of the vision. The document states: "Successful management of traffic throughout the central area is fundamental to the delivery of the emerging proposals." A number of road changes are planned as part of the scheme to make the city centre more "pedestrian-friendly". For example, pedestrians would effectively gain the right of way over traffic in Full Street and all traffic, except for buses and taxis, would be banned from Corporation Street. The city would also gain new cycle paths.

Other road layouts would change under the plans, including the gyratory system around Darwin Place car park, which would be replaced by a simpler, linear road layout further back from the river. But the backbone of the Cityscape vision is seen by its supporters as the successful completion of Derby's inner ring road, otherwise known as Connecting Derby. "It's seen as a key issue by the Cityscape board as well as the council," said Ray Cowlishaw, chief executive of Derby City Council and a member of the Cityscape board. "It's important that we sort out the Connecting Derby proposals." The plans involve the extension of the inner ring road from Bradshaw Way round to Ford Street. They also include a controversial new link road between King Street and Garden Street and some road-widening at the Five Lamps junction.

A special meeting of the council's planning control committee has been arranged to discuss the planning applications linked to Connecting Derby with a view to referring the scheme to the Government for final approval. Action group Derby Heart has consistently opposed the scheme and has been considering legal action over alleged improprieties in the way the council presented an environmental statement in support of the project. But Cityscape chief executive John Cadwallader said, "Connecting Derby is very, very important. It's very important that the Government backs Derby City Council on this."

Mr Cowlishaw said that changes to the city's roads were a prime example of where people were naturally reactionary. "I used to get people stopping me in the street saying the pedestrianisation of the city centre was dreadful. But, six months later, the same people were saying how brilliant it was," he said. "I doubt there's anybody who'd argue that pedestrianisation wasn't a good thing." Although to many it will seem both controversial and contrary to the council's "green travel" policy of encouraging people out of their cars and on to public transport, the Cityscape master plan includes provision for five new multi-storey car parks around the city centre.

They would provide 2,000 parking spaces. But the plans also involve the removal of 1,371 spaces from 11 existing surface level car parks, thus freeing acres of extra development land. Despite the net gain of more than 600 spaces, plus the additional 2,000 parking spaces planned for the new Eagle Centre, Mr Cadwallader believes that, combined with the improved traffic flows resulting from Connecting Derby and the new car parks being located on the edges of the city centre, congestion in the city centre would be reduced. Electronic signs indicating available spaces in the respective car parks would be installed on main routes into the city. (Source: Derby Evening Telegraph)

The future of Derby's multi-million-pound arts and media centre was thrown into doubt after the city council Conservative group voted to withdraw its support from the project. The leader of the Conservative group, Councillor Philip Hickson, said, "We only ever gave qualified support to Quad when it came to cabinet and, since then, Conservative members have become increasingly worried about the spiralling costs of Quad. The amount of money which Quad will require from the council has now risen to at least £2m in capital with additional estimated annual running costs of nearly £400,000. We don't feel this is a burden which should be imposed on council tax payers."

A bid by Derby's Conservative group to kill off the controversial Quad scheme has failed. At a Derby City Council meeting, Richard Smalley, deputy leader of the Conservative group, proposed a motion to not approve any capital or revenue funding by the council for the £9.8m arts centre. The authority's official estimated contribution is between £1.013m and £2.331m. The Tories hoped that to withdraw the funding would spell the end of the project. Fourteen Liberals and three Conservatives voted against the motion. Eight Conservatives and independent councillor Frank Leeming voted in favour. The 25 Labour councillors abstained.

Pat Woolley, of Littleover, said, "I was totally disgusted that so many abstained. If the councillors haven't got the courage of their convictions, they shouldn't be councillors." Councillor Philip Hickson, leader of the Conservative group, told the meeting, "Sometimes we have to put our hands up and say we got it wrong. I'm not afraid to say I originally supported the Quad Scheme but now admit that we made a mistake. The scheme now requires a huge capital cost from the council and my view is simply that the council tax payers in the city should not have to pay this."

But Councillor Paul West, the city council's cabinet member for leisure and cultural services, was one of the three Conservatives to vote against the motion. He said if the council did not go ahead with Quad it would still have cost the council over a million pounds and would lose the city a valuable facility. Liberal Democrat Lucy Care, who voted against the motion, said Quad would cost each taxpayer in the city only four pence per week. Referring to the split over the plans in the Lib Dem/Tory alliance, leader of the council Maurice Burgess said, "We have had a genuine disagreement."

But he added that this meant there was "healthy debate within the administration." He said that unless the council was willing to give the financial backing required the project would die and they would lose all the money being given to it. He pledged that the resited memorial gardens would be made officially open space. Councillor Chris Williamson, Derby's Labour group leader, defended the abstentions. He said, "This matter should not even have been brought before the council."