THE decision by East Hampshire District Council’s (EHDC) cabinet to give its seal of approval to the development brief for the former Molson Coors brewery site in Alton has been met with dismay and deep disappointment by some in the community who fear it will be nothing more than a “bog standard” housing estate.

While designed to set out how the 31-acre site can be best used, in a deliverable and viable way, to advise planners as they decide on future applications, questions are still being asked about the level of public consultation and if enough has been done to take on board suggestions put forward by townsfolk in the hope that Molson Coors will use its Turk Street site to provide a legacy of which Alton can be proud.

But in a letter to The Herald this week, resident Penny Webster-Brown said: “It is disingenuous in the extreme to claim that the brief was developed in consultation with the people of Alton. Many wonderful ideas were put forward, especially by the Alton Society, and subsequently disregarded. We are left with another housing estate when we had the opportunity to revitalise a crucial part of the town.”

The Alton Society is also concerned about the emergence of a brief that, while appearing to incorporate some of its ideas, has fallen well short of the innovative scheme put forward as an alternative.

While understanding the need to be commercially viable, many members feel let down by the development brief drawn up by Molson Coors, East Hampshire District Council and Alton Town Council which, they fear, if followed to the letter will result in the building of a “bog standard” housing estate, and a missed opportunity to turn the space into an imaginative and attractive area designed to enhance rather than detract from the town centre.

Looking at the topography of the former brewery site, the Alton Society believes the layout as put forward in the brief is upside down and that the housing should be on the sloping half to the north of the river, with access from Drayman’s Way, leaving the southern half for community and business use, with undercroft parking to serve the town as a whole.

This too would negate the need for a main residential road bridge over the river, enabling it to be opened up and developed as a tranquil, green corridor cutting through the site, with a public walkway to link up with Kings Pond.

In speaking of the Society’s dismay over the brief, and the haste with which is appears to have been “rushed through”, spokesman and former district councillor Nicky Branch said there was concern too that if 40 per cent affordable housing is to be achieved the brief suggests that it will be concentrated in apartment blocks on a small part of the site leading to a question over whether this is considered “good anti-ghetto planning”.

Of equal concern is the lack of civic space, as outlined in the Alton Society proposal, which members felt would enhance the accessibility and community feel of the area by encouraging the staging of outside concerts and events, as well as public sculptures to commemorate the town’s heritage.

Importantly, it is stressed that the proposed community hub space “needs to be large enough to build a facility that adds to our current assets and that will meet the needs of the town’s expanding population”.

There is confusion also over the results of a survey carried out over three days by EHDC into the use of public car parks in Alton. Despite findings that the three car parks closest to the former brewery site “always reached around 90 per cent full and sometimes more” and that the smaller car parks were similarly well used – Vicarage Hill was full on Wednesday and Manor full on Saturday – it concludes that “there was always capacity in the majority of car parks” in Alton and, on that basis, the decision was taken not to include undercroft parking in the development brief, a decision described by Mr Branch as “short-termism” which fails to take account of the fact that Alton is expected to grow by 25 per cent within the next 12 years.

While the timescale for the sale and development of the site is tight – selection of a preferred development partner by the autumn, with a planning application expected to come forward in early 2017 for a decision by the summer, with work starting on site by late 2017 – the Alton Society is determined to keep pushing its view of how the site should look, in the hope that a future developer will have sympathy with and take the lead from the people of Alton and how they would like to see this key site enhanced, not just as a cash cow but as an asset to the town.