Three of the biggest planning applications that will change the face of Bristol from Clifton to Knowle look set to be decided on the same day in a month’s time.
The plans to build flats on the site of the Bristol Zoo Gardens in Clifton, to demolish the Broad Walk Shopping Centre in Knowle and replace it with up to 850 flats, and the plan to build 166 flats on the current site of the Caravan Club park at Baltic Wharf on the Floating Harbour are all set to be decided on March 15.
All three have met fierce resistance from local residents, environmental campaigners and opposition councillors, but all three look set to be recommended for permission by council planning officers, with councillors having the final say.
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The Broad Walk shopping centre plan was set to be debated and decided on at the start of February, but was postponed and the meeting scrapped to give the council planners more time to prepare their reports to councillors.
Bristol Live understands that the March 15 date it was moved to already had the Bristol Zoo and Baltic Wharf plans scheduled for a decision, but with issues surrounding both those plans too, it won't be completely confirmed all three will be decided on March 15 until a week before, when the agenda for the meeting is revealed.
Bristol Zoo
Perhaps the most contentious could be the plan to develop the iconic site of Bristol Zoo Gardens in Clifton, which has been one of the most recognisable landmarks in Bristol for more than 170 years. Bristol Zoo Gardens closed the site to the public at the start of September last year after announcing it would be moving to the Wild Place site on the other side of the M5 at Cribbs Causeway in 2024.
The plans for the emptying site at Clifton include around 200 new homes, and have been met with a variety of different strands of opposition. The first comes from people who are opposed to what’s planned for the site. They say the flats are too much over-development of the iconic site, and question the future status of the gardens that developers say will still be accessible to the public.
The second comes from a range of business leaders, academics and politicians in Bristol, who say the Bristol Zoo site should not be developed but turned into something else - and a project to create an ‘augmented reality zoo’ there harnessing Bristol’s burgeoning tech industry with the city’s existing world-beating wildlife documentary industry has been launched, and backed by some big-hitters in the city.
And more recently, a third strand of counter view to the plans has emerged, with a campaign to persuade Bristol Zoo itself to reverse its decision and reopen and regenerate the zoo itself as a visitor attraction. That campaign launched in December and has gained support from many of the two previous strands of opposition.
All three strands of the campaign are united in one thing - they all say the first step will be to persuade the planning committee to refuse permission for the Zoo and its developers’ plan for redevelopment.
"Our first and overarching aim is to stop planning permission for ugly and inappropriate luxury housing on the site," said a spokesperson for the Save Bristol Zoo campaign. "It would be a travesty, given the beauty, the heritage and the symbolic importance of this 12-acre city site.
"Secondly, we then need to create further time and energy to determine what will be best for Bristol and the site itself; it is a huge part of the city's history. We believe that the simplest solution is for the Zoo to change its mind and stay – avoiding a potentially long battle over planning, involving both the community and the Zoo in huge effort and expense.
"The final closure and sale are NOT inevitable. It's not too late, and not impossible, that the Bristol Zoo Gardens site can be saved and plans reversed. Bristol has a long history of saving its best – witness the SS Gt Britain, the Ferries, the Cranes, the Old Vic and the purity of the Avon Gorge," they added.
If the saga of the zoo car park across the road is anything to go by, Bristol Zoo and the developers face a battle to get permission for the main zoo gardens site. That separate plan to build 62 new homes on the old zoo car park was given planning permission in 2021, but that decision was quashed when local residents and campaigners took the council to court to get it overturned.
It wasn't until November 2022 that the council awarded planning permission for those new homes again, but even that is being challenged. Last month Bristol Live reported that the Clifton & Hotwells Improvement Society (CHIS) had instructed lawyers to send a second letter to the council warning that unless it overturned that second decision, it would again go back to court to challenge it.
Baltic Wharf
The second big planning application that looks set to be debated on March 15 involves the long-running saga of Baltic Wharf. The city council-owned site was a former timber yard that was never developed with dockside factories or warehouses, and for decades has been run by the Caravan Club of Great Britain as Bristol’s city centre caravan park.
The city council have earmarked it for development through its house-building company Goram Homes, and a planning application was submitted in March 2021 for a development of 166 flats to be built on the site, of which 40 per cent, or 66, will be classed as ‘affordable’.
However, there has been vociferous opposition to this for many years. In September 2021, a group of more than 70 female environmental campaigners ‘married’ the trees that cover the caravan park at the moment, and there have been 528 letters of objection submitted to the council asking for the plan to be refused, including around 50 in the past week alone, after the council reissued notification letters to neighbours late last month.
There are other issues facing the city council too. The plan has been delayed for several years because of issues finding an alternative site for the caravan park to go to. It brings in millions to the tourist industry each year for Bristol, and the Caravan Club had hoped to move to an alternative site across the other side of the Cumberland Basin and River Avon.
That site at the bottom of Rownham Hill on the west bank of the river opposite the Cumberland Basin had been used for years as the Avon and Somerset police horse centre, but has since been left empty. But in March 2022, after a lengthy planning to-and-fro, a Government minister ruled it could not be turned into a caravan park because of the risk of sudden flooding might put lives at risk.
And while the loss of a caravan park, with no obvious alternative location for it to move to announced, might not be of huge material consideration to the planners on what happens to the site at Baltic Wharf, the potential for that site to be flooded as well, could be.
The Environment Agency said it had issues with developing the Baltic Wharf site which stands at pretty much the narrowest point of Spike Island between the floating harbour and the New Cut River Avon, and is maintaining its objections to the scheme and still recommending the application could be refused.
Broad Walk
The third site is one of South Bristol’s most familiar landmarks - the Broad Walk Shopping Centre, on the A37 Wells Road in the heart of Knowle. The run-down 50-year-old shopping centre and even more decaying multi-storey car park behind has long been in trouble, with many popular store chains moving out in recent years, with the 21st century shift to out-of-town retail parks.
The centre and its associated buildings and car park occupy a big square plot of land on the corner of Wells Road and Broad Walk, the main road into Knowle West from Knowle, and before the Covid pandemic, developers got permission to knock down the car park and some of those buildings and build around 420 new flats, as well as give the shopping centre itself a major overhaul.
That never happened, the pandemic hit in 2020 and since then new owners took on the site, saying the first plan is not economically viable anymore, and a much bigger plan is needed.
Read next - ‘Redcatch Quarter’, the story so far:
July 2018 - First plans unveiled for 400 new homes and revamped Broadwalk shopping centre
March 2019 - Councillors give permission to 400 new homes plan
Sep 2019 - Wilko confirms it’s leaving Broadwalk
Dec 2019 - Knowle could become Bristol's next 'hotbed of regeneration' say property experts
July 2021 - What people want for future of 'run-down' Bristol shopping centre
Jan 2022 - Broadwalk to be renamed ‘Redcatch Quarter’, announce developers
Jan 2022 - New plans to demolish Broadwalk entirely and build 800 flats unveiled
May 2022 - South Bristol MP warns of shortage of schools and GPs with 12,000 new homes
June 2022 - Developers tweak plans for ‘Redcatch Quarter’ after consultation
July 2022 - The battle for the soul of Knowle is just getting started
Sep 2022 - Only a small fraction of 850 new homes in South Bristol will be 'affordable'
Sep 2022 - Fight against 'Redcatch Quarter' replacing Broadwalk Shopping Centre steps up
Jan 2023 - Broadwalk or Redcatch Quarter - huge plans divide the Knowle community
Jan 2023 - Fury as campaigners told refusing 'Redcatch Quarter' plans will 'damage community'
They announced their ‘Redcatch Quarter’ plan at the start of 2022. It would see the entire site levelled and developers starting again, creating around 850 new flats in tower blocks up to 12-storeys high that ‘step up’ in height from the Wells Road to the edge of Redcatch Park.
In the middle would be a cinema and community space, with a new pedestrian ‘high street’ going through the development connecting Wells Road directly with Redcatch Park for the first time.
The plans have been controversial in Knowle. The two local councillors back the idea and have controversially warned those speaking out against it that if the plans are turned down, the ageing shopping centre will continue to age and could close altogether pretty quickly.
Those against it have signed submissions to the council opposing it in their hundreds. They say that, while they want to see the shopping centre rejuvenated or rebuilt and are not against the principle of development at the site, the prospect of 850 flats in an already quite built-up area where there is a shortage of school places, doctors and dentists, is going to cause enormous problems.
And there is also big opposition to the dire lack of affordable housing in the 850 new flats. Just a tiny fraction of those apartments will be classed as affordable and made available through a housing association for people on the council's HomeChoice housing waiting list.
They also say the huge 12-storey blocks of flats overlooking Redcatch Park are just too big and overwhelming for an area that is essentially just streets of terraced Victorian and Edwardian homes.
Read next:
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How affordable are the 'record levels of affordable housing' being built in Bristol
Mayor defends affordable housing numbers at Castle Park View
Developers 'have to deliver' affordable housing for Bristol says Mayor
New plans for 350 homes in centre of Bristol - but only 20 per cent 'affordable'
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