RIVERLIGHTS EXHIBITION
By Tony Dunn

Having spent some time studying the Riverlights exhibition, one is left wondering how Derby City Council can call this process a consultation exercise. When confronted on specific questions concerning the proposals, although very polite, the council officers on site either could not or would not answer, and the representatives for the developer were intent on selling the whole sorry mess to the public and totally ignored any difficult queries. The model was about the size of a Christening cake and too small for people to be able to understand what the plans involve.

The artist's impression could have been done on my home computer and printed on a cigarette packet for all the detail it showed. Due to the importance of this development, there should have been senior planning officers present to answer questions. When it was pointed out that the proposed high-rise buildings proposed would create a canyon of pollution all around the new bus station, I was told: "This exhibition is not about the bus station, that is already decided." Yet, one third of the information sheet is purely about the proposed new bus station.

A representative of the developer actually admitted that the view on the front of the handout leaflet was not how the finished development might look. Looking at the image and reading the corporate blurb, there should be at least 19 retail outlets, but the developer admitted that this was very unlikely to happen and that the vast majority of the site would probably be taken by upmarket housing. Isn't that marvellous? - yuppie homes built by an out-of-town firm for wealthy out-of-town people on one of our city's few green open spaces.

The other point is that I do not believe that the income from the new bus station will be enough to maintain the building in future years as inflation increases. Who will pay for the extra police when and if all these new bars are developed? If councillors truly want Derby to make progress as a city, they should throw this whole sorry mess out before becoming the laughing stock of the East Midlands. If not, the only hope is that the developer will not be able to sell all the buildings, in which case the scheme will implode upon itself.

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