Last weekend Kingsway – the county’s leading homes jobs and leisure destination located on A38 south of Gloucester - invited the city to an afternoon out and the chance to come and find out all about the area’s most exciting new community.
A Children’s Community Fair was staged compliments of QUVL, which runs the Kingsway development on behalf of leading UK builders Taylor Wimpey and Persimmon and commercial developer, Cheltenham-based Robert Hitchins Group.
Numerous visitors made their way during the afternoon and early evening to Kingsway to enjoy all the fun of the fair – free games, rides and a helter-skelter, as well as candy floss, hot chestnuts, soup and more. All in all it certainly proved to be a popular afternoon out in the early winter sunshine.
Explains Fair Organiser and Kingsway Marketing Committee chairman, Nicki Reed,
“It was a very special, successful occasion for us all, offering us the chance to put Kingsway on the map and to introduce ourselves to the whole of the city. Everyone seemed to have a great time and it gave our visitors from all over the local area and beyond the opportunity to see our wonderful new community at first hand.”
These are exciting times for the Kingsway development, which is planned to have some 3,600 homes by the year 2012. The next phase of new homes on Neighbourhoods 2 and 3 are already for sale and work has also begun on Kingsway’s own £4.2m two-entry primary school – last Friday an official ‘topping out’ ceremony to launch the school works was attended by local dignitaries and involved company representatives. The school’s first pupils are expected to be at their lessons by September 2008. A second school is to be built during the latter stages of the development.
Excellent progress is also being made on the planning and development of the Local Centre, where a Sainsbury’s store is included along with range of additional, smaller shops including a pharmacy.
The Marstons company is now progressing its scheme to convert barns and outbuildings at historic Manor Farm at the heart of Kingsway into a stylish pub restaurant. This may be open by the end of 2008.
Also planned within the local centre are a residential care home, a place of worship and a purpose built Community Centre. Good progress is also being made on the provision of a Health Centre within Kingsway.
An exciting new Business Park that will form a vital economic and integral part of ever-growing Kingsway is also progressing well.
The Business Park’s developer, Cheltenham-based Robert Hitchins Group, has announced that planners have agreed the master plan for the employment area, which will cover 40 acres and will offer over 1,000,000 square feet of business space, with the ratio of development set to be 40% offices to 60% light industrial and warehousing. It is expected that initial works should begin by February next year with the first units becoming occupied by late spring/early summer of 2008.
An exciting landscaping scheme is also underway within the environs of the Manor Farm, which involves the refurbishment of the farm’s orchards and moat. The areas around the moat and orchard are being developed into a superbly innovative leisure and open space amenity by the Cooper Partnership, a Bristol-based company.
Adds Nicki, “With hundreds of homes already occupied here on Kingsway, more now being sold on Neighbourhoods 2 and 3 and the Local Centre, School and Business Park getting underway, we’re creating an exciting, new, sustainable community, which will become a vibrant village - a wonderful place to in which to live, relax and work.
Kingsway is becoming a unique, special place and will certainly play a major part in the overall urban regeneration of the neighbouring Gloucester area.”