Thursday 31 May 2012

Coral refurb now imminent

Readers of this blog will know that LVIG has been campaigning long and hard to get Coomes, owners of the prominent Coral building (at 228/230 Algernon Road), to refurbish the premises and bring the flats back into use.  Nick Long, the Council's Empty Property Manager, has been doing sterling work behind the scenes and some months ago commenced enforcement action in relation to this and other Coomes properties locally.  Court action was only suspended when Coomes came forward with a planned programme of works.
Now it is clear that Coomes are delivering on their undertakings: they've already started refurbishing their property portfolio in the Borough, and in the last week Nick has been onsite at 228/230 Algernon Road with a Coomes representative who indicated that the company will now, given the level of local interest, bring forward planned work on its Ladywell building. 

This is excellent news.  We are hoping that when the works commence, Phil Spencer and The Great British Property Scandal: Revisited will return to film a piece.  We're not quite there yet but thanks to Nick and all who have been keeping up the pressure.  Let's hope this is the catalyst for further property refurbishment in central Ladywell.  LVIG still has plenty more challenges over the coming years but, for the meantime at least, this looks like being a welcome reward for its contructive partnership approach to local problems.

Robert Sheppard

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Still no sign of any change at end of Aug 2012.

Anonymous said...

Nearly Xmas now. Still looks the same to me. Land Value Tax would be a far more effective way to force owners to bring properties into use rather than the well meaning but misguided and, it seems ineffective, campaign being run by CH4 and that Geordie Architect whose name escapes me.

Steven Newton said...

Still no sign of any change at end of Aug 2012.