Garioch Life Centre Proposal

Inverurie Health Centre

Michael Gilmour Associates

Retail, Offices, Commercial

APP/2007/5010

Objections:

Motive: A retail/commercial development which would never gain planning approval other than a ‘health centre’ has been tagged on the end.

Common sense: At a time when Inverurie Academy has never had so little sport field available, never been so many students, an obesity problem amongst youngsters, to lose any sporting facility is a nonsense. In particular losing a sports field to a commercial retail development.

Consultations: In previous years consultants correspondence only talked about the ‘health centre’ part of the proposal, and never the commercial part.

Design: Architects and developers like their ‘vision designs’, good intentions and all that, another poorly designed building that will age badly. Why no underground car park? Is there bedrock on the site? I think this already shows what a private concern thinks of green space, giving up a substantial amount for a car park.

Congestion: The local area already has a large school, a community centre, scout hut and an adult learning centre. This is in a locality that is mainly residential. At peek times congestion will be too much.

Quality of Life: The local community makes good use of the field, losing any green space like this one is bad news.

Propaganda: I may have put in a letter of support if I’d only been exposed to the propaganda in the health centre. I think many of the ‘letters of support’ are of poor quality as the authors were only given limited information on the development.

And finally: Councillors need also think about the long term bad publicity linking their political party to ‘giving away a sports field to a commercial concern to build retail’. This web page is currently well indexed (Google rank of 3), a list of councillors who are for this development will appear here. (And the political party they belong to)