The Woodgate Hub is next to St Catherine’s Hospice in Grace Holland Avenue at Thakeham’s Woodgate development.
The café and hub has been open since June but its celebration took place on Thursday, September 5, with visitors enjoying drinks and cake while celebrating what it has to offer.
The café and hub has been open since June but its celebration took place on Thursday, September 5, with visitors enjoying drinks and cake while celebrating what it has to offer.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00So, obviously this was designed before the current government had that vision, it's come
00:14through, as you can imagine, a number of years ago, but I think what's really interesting
00:18is it does adhere to the same values the government is now looking at, and that is sustainable
00:23communities.
00:24It's a place, and it's a community that has a heart, rather than just a field of houses.
00:28What we've got here is a central feature of Village Green, and arranged around that
00:32Village Green, we've got the cafe, and the shop, and the community rooms here, and we've
00:36got the school at the other end.
00:38When we started thinking about what a community is, and what good places look like, and we
00:41looked locally, we felt that they could, we could do better, we felt that we could create
00:46community properly by, you know, looking at the functions the community needed.
00:50When we talked to the village, the existing village, you know, they didn't have that shop,
00:53they just had a motorway service, they didn't have a school, and it was important to bring
00:56that here and create that place.
00:58So for us, community creation is about delivering infrastructure.
01:01It's about making sure it's got the schools, it's got the healthcare facilities, it's got
01:05the shops, the cafes, where people interact, where they live their lives properly, as well
01:09as just sleep at night and such and such.
01:11Now what's interesting, of course, is that the government, the new government, have come
01:15out wanting to encourage house building, clearly, across the South, across the country.
01:19But also, they're talking about infrastructure, they're talking about the need for schools,
01:23community facilities, all of the things that we see here.
01:26And I think there's certainly lessons to be learned about good development and bad development.
01:30I personally would say, I guess, but I think this is good development.