Updates
Despite the plan to hold viewing events outdoors at the Grove Park Shops on Wednesday 18th and Saturday 21st March to display the latest Piazza design we have decided to follow and alternative arrangement. Instead the new design plan and its visual representations will be available to see at the Grove Café from Wednesday 18th for one week. Please do visit the Café and fill out a comments form which will be available inside. The café will collect the completed forms. Contact details of the Grove Park Group and the Hounslow design team will also be displayed if you would prefer to send your comments direct. Whether you decide to view the plans first hand or prefer to reply to the consultation papers delivered to your home please do take some time to respond with your comments. The design is not fixed and we very much want to have your input.
After what seems a very long wait the Piazza project is now moving ahead quickly. Back in September 2017 the GPG Piazza crowdfunding appeal hit its target. The money was pledged by Grove Park residents and Hounslow Council to fund a fully engineered design for the space. Since then Hounslow Council have been working on ways to raise the necessary finance to construct the Piazza. In 2019 they made a breakthrough. Using the Piazza project as an example of community driven improvement they applied for, and won, a £3 million grant from the Mayor of London’s Liveable Neighbourhood scheme. The Piazza formed part of a wider initiative called South Chiswick. The council launched a public survey at the end of 2019 to collect the response and opinions from the local community. It de- scribed the scheme as follows: “It combines a range of schemes across the Grove Park and Dukes Meadows area that focus on increasing the number of trips made by foot, bike and public transport while improving local public space. Certain elements of the project are well defined, such as the proposed pedestrian bridge under Barnes Bridge and a new public square in Grove Park near to Chiswick Station (the Piazza). Alongside this there are also broader aims to provide improved walking and cycling links across the area while also looking to address well known issues of excessive traffic volumes and speeds in residential areas, which are often used as cut-throughs to access major roads'. Based on the favoured of four early concept Piazza designs and comments collected from residents Steer, the selected design company, have produced a revised draft design. This is now ready for scrutiny and comment by us, the residents and businesses in the South Chiswick area. The new draft design will be available to view in our marquee outside the Grove Park Shops on: Wednesday 18th March between 3pm – 6pm Saturday 21st March between 11am – 2pm Both days will be attended by the designers from Steer, members of the Hounslow management team and the GPG committee to guide you through the design, answer questions and record comments and opinions. These will be used to inform any future design iteration. On the Saturday there will be a BBQ and refreshments available courtesy of the GPG. Why not come along and take your time looking at the design and discussing it with your fellow residents. Your opinions are crucially important as the Piazza needs to meet the needs of the community as much as satisfy the objectives of the Liveable Neighbourhood scheme. What is more it might be here for 100 years!
Today the Grove Park Group Residents Association is very pleased to announce that the Grove Park shops Piazza design is to go ahead. Hounslow Councli's share of the funding has been provided by the Mayor of London's Liveable Neighbourhoods programme. Last year the firm Steer Davies Gleave were appointed to provide the design for the Piazza and now we are in a position to get them started on the work. Again big thanks to all the patient backers of the project who have been waiting for this news. We will now work closely with the designers to ensure your vision for the Piazza is observed. As the design comes together we will hold an event at the shops to share progress and get your feedback.
Following the tender process earlier in the year, a company has now been appointed to carry out the Piazza design specification. We are pleased to report that the design proposal from the designers, Steer Davies Gleave, has come in under the original estimated figure. However, that estimate was based on the original concept and therefore omits a number of important features that residents wish to see included. Following discussion with Hounslow Council and Spacehive, the GPG would like to recommend that any surplus from the design stage be carried forward into the Piazza construction funding. This will not only provide crucial seed funding, but may lead to some construction work starting earlier than anticipated. Your feedback is invited.
It has been a while since we hit our target and collected the pledges from everyone. However things have been moving on. Firstly Hounslow Traffic Dept. prepared a Request for Quotation document before Christmas. This was issued in February with a deadline for Tender submissions at the end of March. These are now being evaluated and a contract will be awarded in early April. Members of the Grove Park Group committee together with 3 local architects have formed a group that is liaising with Hounslow to review the RFQ and Tender submissions on behalf of residents and businesses of Grove Park and offer our recommendations. Once one of the tenders has been accepted the project will move to the next stage which is to accumulate funding for implementation of the construction. As a consequence of the successful crowdfunding of the Piazza project Hounslow have set up Our Hounslow in conjunction with SpaceHive to fund similar smaller projects across the borough. Thanks again to all those who pledged and please look out for further progress posts from the GPG.
We did it! Thanks to the vision and generosity of Grove Park residents together with Hounslow Council we achieved our pledge target. Congratulations and thank you to all who put faith and hard earned cash towards the project. The next step is to tender the design specification for the Piazza construction. This could take 6-9 months to complete. Following that the design will be used to pitch for funds for the Piazza construction itself. The Grove Park Group committee has worked hard over the past year to make this happen, and particularly the last 4 months that the crowdfunding appeal has run. If you are not a GPG member but would like to benefit from the work we do please visit our website www.groveparkgroup.co.uk and click on the 'Join now' panel on the home page.
We only have 15 hours left to secure council investment in Grove Park that will otherwise be spent elsewhere in the borough. Our objective to get to 85% by 6pm this evening. That means we need pledges of £6,000. After receiving such overwhelming support from Grove Park residents and businesses it will be a big missed opportunity not to reach our target.
Congratulations to all those who have pledged! We have hit 75% of our target. This is a tremendous effort and the Grove Park Group continues to talk to a whole number of charities, companies and individuals in a race for the line. We have 19 days left to do it so if you know of anyone who has not yet pledged or is holding back please ask them to make pledge.
