One of the interesting qualities of the town is the significant change of level between the top of the town around Pride Hill and St Mary’s Church and the riverside. The reconfiguration of the shopping centres provides a golden opportunity, by creating an extra-ordinary new connection, activated and enlivened by new buildings and new uses with terraces offering views of the river, busy squares and public spaces.
The section below is for illustrative purposes only, but gives a flavour of the kind of activities and the uses that could transform the experience of people moving between the historic town centre and the riverside and vice versa.
The removal of the multi-storey car park and the Riverside shopping centre creates a great opportunity to create a mixed use riverside quarter. This would include higher density housing, new workspaces, new food and drink venues set around a new public promenade stepping down to the river.
There is an opportunity to divert through traffic onto Raven Meadows thereby releasing Smithfield Road for the creation of a largely traffic-free promenade next to the river.
