Neighbours have shared their sadness over plans to partly demolish a Bowls club next to a popular park to build new apartments. The project would see the empty Bowls clubhouse in Addison Street, next to the Arboretum, turned into 29 apartments providing 56 bedrooms.
The Georgian-era Clubhouse would be refurbished and converted to residential apartments. However, the bowling green and more recent Victorian additions would be replaced with new buildings.
Locals were not convinced by the proposal, with a poster from the Arboretum Residents Association urging people to object to the plans for the 'beautiful' bowling green. Melvyn Mewton, 68, who has lived on Addison Street for 50 years and whose dad was a member of the club, said he was shocked by the new plans.
"I was absolutely shocked when I found out about it, it is not needed. All up this street there are flats, why add more?" Mr Mewton said.
"My father was a member for 20 years so I have a bond with it really. It started closing down during the pandemic because a lot of people had gotten ill or died - it was so sad it had no chance really after Covid.
"It is important to the Arboretum as a whole that these apartments aren't built. It will cause traffic chaos twice a day when the school traffic is down here as well."
Kaleem Shah, 24, who lives on Clipstone Avenue and works in a warehouse, said: "It would basically put a building site down in the Arboretum. Think of all the wildlife that would impact on.
"It will definitely take away from what the Arboretum is for people. I've seen the plans and they don't suit the area, it is an old place and it should be preserved if anything.
"I just do not understand why you would take something like this away from the area. it's sad because it was obviously somewhere for the community to meet before Covid."
James Little, 21, who studies business management at Nottingham Trent University and lives on Addison Street, added: "It's been closed all of the time I have been here, we moved here in September and I've never seen anyone in there.
"I suppose they may as well do something with it if it's permanently closed, but I hadn't seen the sign until now. I think a few locals may be upset by it."
In a planning document, Rayner Davies Architects, on behalf of Unitech Plus Limited, said: "The original pavilion and its setting is to be retained and refurbished to ensure the building’s ongoing usage and to be sensitively extended to provide new high-quality accommodation inside wings that are subservient in style and scale to the original.
"Where additional new build development is required, this has been introduced sensitively by continuing the street scene along Addison Street with a contemporary interpretation of the adjacent Victorian villas. The style of architecture proposed is based on and will therefore not harm the character of the conservation area.
"The proposed structures will not be overbearing and will fit well within the street scene. It has been demonstrated that the proposals are a high quality response to the brief, the site constraints and to their setting within the conservation area." The planning application is currently pending consideration by Nottingham City Council.
