2025 and into the future
It’s been a bit quiet recently with a pause in YoCo open meetings, although some of you saw us last summer at the St.Barnabas Saturday tabletop events. This doesn’t mean nothing’s been happening however. Here’s a brief update ahead of what are intended to be more public, engaging times.
Spring 2024 saw us working on ideas which had been central to YoCo since developing our Community Plan in 2020. We started to look in more detail at how a mixed-use development next to the former Foundry buildings on York Central might provide homes, workplaces and public space, as well as bringing those huge disused buildings back into use as the focus of a new creative district. We created a financial framework to explore how this might work and what sort of homes we might be able to include, with a mix of tenures and affordabilities generating “a community made through exchange”.
During summer 2024 it became clear that this was becoming problematic. The council wants all housing built on council-owned land to be “100% affordable”. That conflicted with our proposed mechanism of cross-subsidy and the creation of a mixed community. Discussions regarding the Foundry buildings weren’t positive. It became clear that, although their future use was uncertain, the master developers Arlington saw any decisions on their future being firmly within the scope of their cultural strategy, and not the for the community to shape.
However the master developer is committed to the principle of community-led development on York Central, taking a flexible view of phasing future development to accommodate it. We have been told that a proposal would be welcomed. It has to be sufficiently robust (including funding commitments) and to be clearly feasible, do-able. Equally positively, we are receiving help and encouragement from CYC officers and councillors who appreciate the complexity of this and are keen to see development which goes beyond what they, and the developer, can do themselves.
At this point you might be thinking “yeah but – years of work, is it worth it?” Well – here’s a success story that shows what is possible – the green light has been given to a bold, mixed, exciting development rooted in, and shaped by local people in Frome in rural Somerset. Read about Mayday Saxonvale in The Guardian here, take a look at their website here, or revisit the blog we wrote which includes their participation in our “Don’t Extract, Redistribute!” event in 2023.
We’re beginning to prepare that detailed proposal for the master developer. There are distinct strands of work to complete, specific steps along the way. For instance, we need to identify the work and skills required to complete a feasibility study, effectively an outline design proposal with a clear outcome in terms of costs, funding sources and how it will be managed and organised in a proper manner. This element needs paid professional input. We’ve identified a possible source for finance to enable the feasibility study to be done. A small group of us will be drafting a bid for this over the coming weeks (and we’re always happy for help with this!)
Alongside that, and equally importantly, we need to create and build a group of future residents and businesses who want to live and work in this new neighbourhood. This will demonstrate demand and those involved will act as clients for the design process. This is what community led housing and neighbourhood development is all about, ensuring that what is proposed is what is wanted for the future lives to be lived there. We certainly need help with this. So we’re working hard on a new format for open meetings, and more focused ways for people to be involved in shaping particular aspects of our plans and making them real.
And alongside both of these, we’re refreshing the information we put out – for potential residents, policy makers and decision takers in the city or the world in general. You’ll notice the website has changed a bit; this is very much an intermediate step as we’re keen to make it a more comprehensive and accessible place for all things YoCo.
