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Post by aitch on Jan 21, 2023 18:59:17 GMT
From the Spelthorne Green's newsletter:
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Post by geoffr on Jan 21, 2023 19:10:03 GMT
From the Spelthorne Green's newsletter:
Well done councillors. Now tell me how it is going to be used. I am in favour of saving such buildings but if the result of that it remains empty I have to question the benefit of doing so. |
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Post by stevewmh on Jan 25, 2023 16:49:47 GMT
Walked past the old Debenham site, on Monday, it looks like the ground floor will soon be opening as a furniture , general goods store
Be good to see the old place used again
The last thing Staines needs is more blocks of flats, Woking tried that and has found at enormous cost, nobody wants to live in the things
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Post by JohnY on Jan 25, 2023 19:38:43 GMT
Walked past the old Debenham site, on Monday, it looks like the ground floor will soon be opening as a furniture , general goods store Be good to see the old place used again The last thing Staines needs is more blocks of flats, Woking tried that and has found at enormous cost, nobody wants to live in the things You could put illegal immigrants in there. More constructively I would refer to a number of obsolete buildings in the centre of my home city of Leeds. The buildings have (not had) fine facades. Steel structures were built to support the facades. The main parts of the building were demolished and replaced.
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Post by andy on Jan 25, 2023 20:14:02 GMT
Walked past the old Debenham site, on Monday, it looks like the ground floor will soon be opening as a furniture , general goods store Be good to see the old place used again The last thing Staines needs is more blocks of flats, Woking tried that and has found at enormous cost, nobody wants to live in the things You could put illegal immigrants in there. More constructively I would refer to a number of obsolete buildings in the centre of my home city of Leeds. The buildings have (not had) fine facades. Steel structures were built to support the facades. The main parts of the building were demolished and replaced.
They get put in jail then deported. It's also illegal to assist illegal immigrants by giving them somewhere to stay. Can't say I've ever met one, have you? I have met plenty legal migrants and given them free bikes though. |
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Post by Ivor E Tower on Jan 25, 2023 22:11:28 GMT
The last thing Staines needs is more blocks of flats, Woking tried that and has found at enormous cost, nobody wants to live in the things Guildford BC wants their Debenhams store to be demolished and blocks of flats built there instead. It is apparently what local councils want, instead of getting no business rates from empty shops, they get loads of council tax from occupiers of town centre living accommodation Anyone told the developers that the Debenhams building in Guildford is right next to the river and the basement flooded when the water level rose a little higher than "normal"? As for Woking town centre..... a building site for many years and I'm not convinced about it now. Bring back Skeet & Jeffes |
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Post by aitch on Jan 26, 2023 9:37:58 GMT
The last thing Staines needs is more blocks of flats, Woking tried that and has found at enormous cost, nobody wants to live in the things Guildford BC wants their Debenhams store to be demolished and blocks of flats built there instead. It is apparently what local councils want, instead of getting no business rates from empty shops, they get loads of council tax from occupiers of town centre living accommodation Anyone told the developers that the Debenhams building in Guildford is right next to the river and the basement flooded when the water level rose a little higher than "normal"? As for Woking town centre..... a building site for many years and I'm not convinced about it now. Bring back Skeet & Jeffes The Staines Debenhams is a couple of hundred yards from the river. The old Masonic Hall site is a few yards more and work has already started on the blocks for there - they are currently sinking the necessary piles. Judging by the size if the pile drill - about the size of the one used for the Drake House site - they must be putting in 20 metre piles. A lot of them. Tall thin buildings that close to the river doesn't seem a good idea, though I suppose the engineers know what they are doing. |
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Post by geoffr on Jan 26, 2023 10:11:13 GMT
...though I suppose the engineers know what they are doing. Experience tells me that is not a good assumption. I have seen too many instances where the "engineers" got their sum wrong. What is my profession? I'm an engineer! |
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Post by aitch on Jan 26, 2023 11:59:39 GMT
...though I suppose the engineers know what they are doing. Experience tells me that is not a good assumption. I have seen too many instances where the "engineers" got their sum wrong. What is my profession? I'm an engineer!  There's a slightly sensationalist, but generally watchable series on Yesterday (iirc) called Great Engineering Disasters. To be fair, not all the disasters are totally down to the engineers in question...
Oh, and I checked this morning when shopping - Debenhams is only about 100 yards from the river.  ETA: The pile rig they are using can go down to 33 metres...
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Post by nickr on Jan 26, 2023 12:20:24 GMT
...though I suppose the engineers know what they are doing. Experience tells me that is not a good assumption. I have seen too many instances where the "engineers" got their sum wrong. What is my profession? I'm an engineer! As it happens, I've just written an answer in which I allude to the fact that personal experience can actually lead one to examine evidence incorrectly and think things are worse than they are, and I think this is another example - when you're potentially dealing with failures, things tend to look worse than they are. |
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Post by geoffr on Jan 26, 2023 12:45:59 GMT
Experience tells me that is not a good assumption. I have seen too many instances where the "engineers" got their sum wrong. What is my profession? I'm an engineer! As it happens, I've just written an answer in which I allude to the fact that personal experience can actually lead one to examine evidence incorrectly and think things are worse than they are, and I think this is another example - when you're potentially dealing with failures, things tend to look worse than they are. Given that my field isn’t civil engineering, I think it is fairly safe to say that my experience doesn’t encompass building close to rivers, though Boeing’s Renton plant is close to a river. Engineers make mistakes just like everyone else, the problem isn’t making a mistake it is not ensuring that someone else checks for mistakes. Most of those I have seen weren’t catastrophic, they simply made one question how something had slipped through. Making assumptions is poor engineering, questions are cheap, reworking a fleet of aeroplanes isn’t. In the case of Staines, one has to hope that the engineers asked the right questions. Also that the client specified what was really wanted. Many an “engineering disaster” has actually been due to an incorrect brief. |
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Post by aitch on Jul 2, 2023 14:37:52 GMT
... The last thing Staines needs is more blocks of flats, Woking tried that and has found at enormous cost, nobody wants to live in the things Just to bring things up-to-date:
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Post by nimbus on Jul 2, 2023 17:08:14 GMT
Walked past the old Debenham site, on Monday, it looks like the ground floor will soon be opening as a furniture , general goods store Be good to see the old place used again The last thing Staines needs is more blocks of flats, Woking tried that and has found at enormous cost, nobody wants to live in the things The last thing many towns need is more blocks of flats, its about as far as the "vision" of many councils goes. The problem of course is that there is a shortage of housing in this country and flats are higher density. |
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Post by spinno on Jul 3, 2023 6:52:03 GMT
Currently blocks of flats are being used to house students (remember Granny farms)
All they need is in there
They're all in the middle of towns and cities
They all have cctv
About the only thing missing are bars on the windows
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