Walker Cricket Ground update

So I have had a further look at the Walker Cricket Club plans.

First the good news:
1. Car park B near Mayfield Avenue residents has been reduced, with the mini-roundabout turn circle removed.
2. The building has been shrunk both vertically and horizontally.
3. The existing car park next to the tennis courts has a new landscape feature added in the centre of the car park.

And now the bad news:
1. Extra parking has been tacked on the Waterfall road end, compensating for the reduction at the Mayfield avenue end.
2. The facilities for cricketers are pitiful. They do not even have dedicated toilets for each changing room. Competitive teams do not have any means of changing, storing equipment, using a bathroom and having team meetings separately from each other.
3. The squash club have to use the same changing rooms as the cricketers so you would have great difficulty in hosting a cricket tournament while allowing the squash residents to continue to play.
4. The area given over to the Health club is simply enormous in comparison.

The bottom line is that we have a trustee group who are contemplating replacing a cricket club with an enormous health club on the grounds with a minor nod to its cricket roots by way of appeasement and I am deeply concerned by this.

As I mentioned before, on structural grounds I believe it fair to say that they have made some good progress in answering our initial concerns, but we are still left with a health club.

If they had provided plans showing a new building offering superb cricket, soccer, hockey and squash facilities, together with family restaurant, viewing rooms, conference rooms etc. then I for one would be a lot happier as I would view the plans as a demonstration of the trustees commitment to promote the grounds. What I see here is an attempt to gain revenue with minimal effort by leasing off a section of the grounds to a health club operator and no genuine signs of a commitment to the grounds themselves.

For this reason I remain against the plans, but whether the council planning office can take these concerns into account I am unsure. I will write back on this shortly.