The Kings Road playground is set to get a revamp as a result of a £25 million project to strengthen more seafront arches.
The plan to reinforce arches under the A259 between the bandstand and the i360 and west of Shelter Hall is due to be signed off by Brighton and Hove City Council’s cabinet next week.
The work is essential to avoid a “catastrophic failure” of the arches, and the road above. In 2014, the arch housing the Fortune of War pub collapsed, closing the road for several months.
The report before the committee says there is currently cracking in some of the unrestored arches, and without the works it’s likely they would be unusable within ten years.
It also asks councillors to approve a consultation on reworking the playground, which will need to be closed during the works.
Councillor Trevor Muten, Cabinet member for Transport and City Infrastructure, said: “The arches have served the city well, but they need strengthening so they can support the road, pavement and cycle lanes above for the next 100 years.
“The new arches will create an improved space for local businesses on a busy and vibrant part of the seafront, which gets hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.
“It also gives us a great opportunity to look at the future of the King’s Road paddling pool. This is a hugely popular space and we want to make the best use of it.
“We’re going to work closely with the community to make sure we create an area for the benefit and enjoyment of everyone.
“The first three phases of this project saw the creation of new shops, toilets and Shelter Hall.
“These next two will see the culmination of years of work for a better and lasting seafront.”
The Department for Transport would fund more than £22 million to complete the scheme – which forms phases four and five of an arch strengthening project begun in 2012.
The council would contribute a further £3.9 million, with £1.8 million of that coming from public borrowing.
The arches underneath King’s Road were built in the Victorian era. King’s Road carries an average of more than 25,000 vehicles and 2,100 cyclists a day.
It’s going to be inconvenient for everyone, but it’s necessary work. It needs to be completed fully, on time, to budget and of high quality.
I’m all for preservation of historical architecture, but in this case, £25m for some arches is frankly ludicrous IMHO. Dig it out, backfill and get on with it. This city needs £25m spent elsewhere…..
Reading the report to Cabinet (as linked in the article) would have covered those points for you.
These arches are holding up the road and form a viaduct. These are’t decorative like the Madeira Terraces are. They aren’t particularly historic in the scheme of things. You can’t see them.
Just filling in these arches is covered by this report and the option was rejected (as was the ‘do nothing one’.)
Even filling them in would still cost a considerable amount of money. But you’d lose the retail spaces that are currently there and the rental and rates income to the council. Existing business would be forced to close resulting in job losses and the opportunity to create new commercial spaces would be lost.
Plus you’d have a considerable area that would just be a blank wall which isn’t very welcoming to visitors.
And given that £22.2m of the cost is being met by a government grant it doesn’t automatically flow that the grant would just be allocated to other projects in the city given the funding is for works on the Major Routes Network
Yeah, but that would involve reading more than just the headline lol tony has the attentionspan of a goldfish
Is this the splash puddle that is closed for 50 weeks a year, lined with toxic chopped up car tyres?
Build a proper shallow pool, with space for parents to sit all day and enjoy like there used to be.
Ah yes the old concrete one where kids would regularly slip and seriously hurt them selves. I remember it well, when I was about 7-9 my mate fell over and broke his wrist on the concrete kerb stones, another knocked his teeth out,
Maybe things get changed for a reason…