YoCo News (October 2022): Meanwhile use, but with a (YoCo) plan in mind…
We had our first in person YoCo Open Meeting on 17th October, hosted by the lovely wardens at St Barnabas Church. We covered what’s happening with the York Central infrastructure, our green spaces walk as part of York Environment Week, our meanwhile Incubator plan and shared more on how the Learning Hub conversations are progressing.
Our next Open Meeting will be combined with our Annual General Meeting on 26th November, 2-4pm, St Barnabas. All very welcome, but members get a vote. Do join YoCo (for free) if you haven’t already!
Get in touch with us about anything that piques your interest on: yocoinformation@gmail.com We’ll look forward to hearing from you.
York Central – what’s happening?
At the moment the infrastructure is going in – this includes the bridge from Water End through Millennium Green. The Unipart factory – between the National Railway Museum and the Railway Station – has been levelled and marked up with car parking spaces. A diversion for Cinder Lane will be introduced at some point. From the recent news item on the York Central website this will run around the new Unipart car park.
Riverside path
There are planned improvements for the riverside path linked to the National Railway Museum planning permission for their new Central Hall. (YoCo, like many others, objected to the access arrangements through the Central Hall). We are told residents will be consulted soon on path width and type of surface.
Making the most of Leeman Road's green spaces
YoCo ran an event as part of York Environment Week exploring Leeman Road’s green spaces from the nature reserve to the Friends of Leeman Park growing beds to the Edible York Apple Store. The walk generated in-depth conversation – about the wild and growing spaces we already have and how they might be connected with those to come on York Central.
Incubator – meanwhile use for growing a community wealth building local economy
The YoCo Community Plan we developed last year started from key hopes for York Central. That there will be 'children playing on the streets' and that you’ll be able to 'hear birdsong'. The Plan then traced out the underpinning economic and social structures that enable that. This has led to a strand of work in collaboration with SPARK on an incubator for the existing Foundry buildings to 'grow our own local economy'. This ‘meanwhile use’ would develop the local businesses that would then take premises on York Central (and in our Co-Owned Neighbourhood) once it is built. We have a draft prospectus now and have been testing the ideas with anyone who will listen.
A Learning Hub for York Central
Following our Learning Hub event with Choose 2 in July, we're working with York Learning to develop further what a Hub for Learning on York Central might look like and build a network of organisations interested in making it happen. We know that supporting the grassroots infrastructure for learning – as York Learning does – is key for a thriving, community wealth building, redistributive local economy.