Councillors have voted to go ahead with the acquisition of a Farnborough town centre regeneration site.
Rushmoor Borough Council’s cabinet agreed to acquire a 3.8-hectare development site which includes The Meads, a completed phase of regeneration, and Kingsmead where the next phase was due to take place but which stalled in lockdown and never restarted.
Developer KPI, part of St Modwen, is seeking to exit the arrangement and the council has now agreed to buy the site.
Cllr Maurice Sheehan said the history of corporate landlords had not been great in Farnborough. He said MEPC had overseen the town centre’s decline and argued that it was an understatement to say St Modwen had underperformed.
He went on: “We could wait and see if there’s another private enterprise out there that’s going to do it but I don’t see them coming over the horizon any time soon.
“What our experience shows, particularly in Aldershot, is we need to grasp the opportunity by the neck and start delivering that opportunity. We can see the success that we can deliver by what’s going on in Aldershot at the moment.
“I want to replicate that success in Farnborough town centre. This is very much a flagship acquisition for this authority and I look forward to a much brighter future for The Meads under council ownership, long into the future.”
Image: Google.
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