NEW housing and some shops off Oxpens Road? Sounds lovely.
A swanky 150-room hotel? Brilliant.
A terraced amphitheatre overlooking a peaceful stretch of the Thames with a new footbridge and a cafe nearby? Now that’s the ticket.
What more could we want?
Oxford City Council has unveiled its latest vision for the West End redevelopment, with a target start date of 2015.
That corner of the city centre is badly in need of redevelopment and while we welcome the council’s desire to push ahead it must not turn out to be another fanfare announcement followed by years of inactivity.
We take you back six years when then city council leader John Goddard (speaking about the grandly -itled West End Action Plan) said: “This is now for real. People might have doubted it before the Oxford Castle development took place. And perhaps before the Westgate got planning permission and before the plans to sort out Bonn Square.”
That mention of Westgate is instructive because that too has lacked any tangible progress.
Redevelopment of the West End is long overdue and hopefully the council has made its announcement because the plan is finally built on solid foundations.
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