Councillors have unanimously backed a bid for the former Mill Road library in Cambridge despite an army of residents who supported an alternative group buying the Grade II-listed building.
Cambridgeshire County Council’s assets & procurement committee supported a cash bid from what the council calls ‘a creative-minded individual with a background in the community arts scene’ at its October 15 meeting.
The county council-owned building, dating from 1892, has been vacant for years and the council had drawn up a list of seven bidders interested in buying it with ‘bidder 1’ its preferred choice.
But a petition of 2,000 people supported a rival bid from the community.
Campaigner Katie Preston told the meeting: “What is clearly discernible is that bidder 1 is not a community bidder. There’s a vast difference between offering studio spaces for hire at commercial rents and the not-for-profit community facilities offered in the adjacent community centre with which the community bid is hoping to co-operate and complement, not compete with.”
She suggested bidder 1 will make a quick sale and profit from the building which was was marketed by Gerald Eve with a guide price of £700,000.
Cllr Mark Goldsack argued that Cambridge City Council should have bid while Cllr Catherine Rae said she has had a number of meeting with residents and said she understood the locals’ concerns but warned that listed buildings require ‘expensive and continuous maintenance’.
She went on: “Taking everything in balance I think bidder 1 gives us the best possibility of this building returning to community use, maybe not exactly as the community bid would envisage but, to a large extent in providing the kind of facilities that are appropriate to its origins. And I hope very much that that will happen and that it will go on serving the extraordinary community of Mill Road.”
The council says the chosen buyer is expected to complete the sale by the end of the year and then engage with the community.
Afterwards, committee chair Cllr Ros Hathorn said: “We know there’s been a lot of interest in what’s happening with the former Mill Road library across the local community, with several individuals good enough to come along today to committee to make clear their support for continued community use of the building.
“We’ve taken this decision in the context of continuing difficult economic conditions for the Council. We’ve received a strong bid from a creative and community-minded bidder.
“This bid to create an arts centre combines the best of both worlds with a dynamic community-focused offer from a private individual with the finances and experience to bring the former library back into public use.”
Image: Former Free Library, Mill Road, Cambridge by Jim Osley, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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