Greenbank Hotel plans anger at meeting (From Falmouth Packet)

Greenbank Hotel plans anger at meeting

11:22am Tuesday 25th November 2008 in News By Emma Goodfellow

It was standing room only last night as almost 80 people crammed into Falmouth's WI Hall to discuss the Greenbank Hotel's plans for extending into the foreshore.

The hotel wants to upgrade the hotel to a premium destination resort, with additional suites and rooms, larger conference and restaurant facilities, and more than double the current car parking allocation,in a £14 million scheme.

With almost universal opposition to the plans at the meeting, discussions became quite heated at times, as objectors disagreed with the development's architect, Nigel Atkins from CSA Architects, who attended.

The meeting was called by the Falmouth Residents' Association and the Foreshores Group and heard from a number of speakers before it was thrown open to public comments.

Hilary Bracegirdle summed up the three main concerns as "style, size and nature of the development."

John Popplewell then spoke on his fears over the effect the development would have on the environment, which currently attracted wildlife in the form of birds such as red shanks, oyster catchers and herons as well as fish such as mullet, sand eels and bass.

Myra Morris said that a similar application for the Greenbank had been turned down and then rejected again on appeal in 1989, with the reasons given by the Planning Inspectorate at the time including the belief further buildings would "alter and detract" from the appearance and character of the conservation area.

Speaking on what could happen to the traffic, Dave Culling said that parking in that area was already a "nightmare" and he feared that with the increase in vehicles the county council might want to put down yellow lines, which would reduce parking even further.

Members of the public were then invited to speak, with one man describing the proposed development as a "monstrosity." He added: "I'm all in favour of people making money, but if it's at the expense of the environment and the local community it has to be stopped. At the end of the day, people must have their say."

Everyone attending the meeting was urged to write to planning officer Tim Marsh at Carrick district council by the cut off date of December 17.