On Thursday 21 Nov 2013, the Vale Scrutiny Committee had a close look at the sequence of events that led to the sale of Westway Shopping Centre (WSC) and its interest in the land nearest the corner of West Way and Westminster Way, referred to as Site 1.
Site 1 has several landowners who jointly offered their land for sale. Site 1 comprises the vacant Grant Thornton Building, Elms Court and the building housing the library and Andrews Dry Cleaning, Seacourt Hall and the public toilets, Botley Baptist Church and the car park next to the Co-op. Oddly it also includes the rear half of the Co-op store.
Here’s the timeline:
1967: Botley Shopping Centre is built, “with its attractive variety of modern shops”. See the newspaper article.
2000: Vale buys WSC for about £5,800,000.
Nov 2010: The Vale Executive, having consulted with Botley community, decides to join with other landowners to offer Site 1 for public sale, with the aim of achieving the best terms, subject to delivering a development within 5 years that complemented the existing WSC. Parties had in mind a large food store with a replacement community hall and Baptist church, with space for a new library (subject to OCC as libraries authority). Food store was envisioned to be slightly larger than Abingdon Waitrose, with 450 parking spaces. Some proceeds from the sale would be used to improve WSC.
Feb 2011: land offered for sale under a marketing and co-operation agreement (MCA). There were 13 firm offers. A shortlist of 6 bidders were reviewed closely, and two bidders came top: Doric was one of those.
May 2011: Tories win the election and take over management of the Vale. They start to expand the scope of the West Way redevelopment from the smaller scale original development, to a much larger scale regeneration: demolition of Site 1, West Way Shopping Center, and other areas (Elms Parade, Vicarage, Field House) to build the High Street Botley never had. This is all done with no communication to the people of Botley, until the first Doric consultation in Feb 2013.
May 2011- approx Apr 2012: Extended negotiations with the other bidder, which ran into (unspecified) trouble and the parties to the MCA decided to go with Doric. Dates not clear.
Feb 2012: North Hinksey Parish Council hosted a public meeting about the West Way Redevelopment. Vale officers attending introduced the concepts of Site 1 and Site 2. They expressed their view that it was too early to discuss specifics of the potential proposals. We learned later that only the sale of Site 1 was then being negotiated. Nonetheless, public feedback was solicited and captured.
Apr-Nov 2012: Doric produced proposals for a comprehensive redevelopment of WSC, to widen the catchment and presented their ideas at Cabinet briefings (these are secret; no details are available to the public).
Dec 2012: Cabinet agreed they should use ownership of WSC to facilitate the regeneration of Botley. Contracts exchanged with Doric for Site 2. (Contracts already exchanged for Site 1 at some unspecified earlier date.) All done with no consultation with local community. Contracts are conditional, so there are get-out clauses, but the specifics of the conditions are secret.
Feb 2013: Doric’s first consultation, with high level proposal showing zones of activity.
April 2013: West Way Community Concern’s survey, which had 720 responses.
22 May 2013: West Way Community Concern public meeting to share results of their survey. See these results here.
Sep-Oct 2013: (Originally planned for spring, then July, but delayed). Doric’s second consultation with a ore detailed proposals for Land Usage.
Oct 2013: Liberal Democrats launched a petition in support of community opinion to tell the Vale to Drop the Doric Deal. In 10 days it got over 900 signatures. At Council meeting, Lib Dems proposed a motion to Vale to drop the deal, which resulted in agreement from Tory leader to bring the decision to scrutiny.
18 Nov 2013: Over 300 people come to St Peter’s and St Paul’s Church for a standing-room-only public meeting about West Way redevelopment. Several speakers, Q&A sessions and tea and cakes made for lots of conversations and suggestions for strategy.
21 Nov 2013: Scrutiny Committee meeting well attended by public, with many questions and some answers. Feeling is disappointment at the attitude of Tory Leader that this deal is going through no matter what the local opinion is.
23 Nov 2013: nearly 600 people gather for Arms Around Elm’s Parade, to protest the Doric proposals to demolish Elms Parade.
11 Dec 2013: West Way Community Concern has over 1200 signatures (as at 25 Nov), enough to get their petition onto the Vale full council agenda, where members may debate it.
Nov -Dec 2013: Planning application expected from Doric.
To see everything, check out the West Way Community Concern website: click here
Feb 2012: