APPENDIX 21
Memorandum submitted by the Portsmouth
Society
PORTSMOUTH MILLENNIUM TOWER
We are the local amenity society for the city of
Portsmouth, affiliated to the Civic Trust. We have read in the
local paper that your Committee are investigating the delays and
tribulations concerning the building of the Millennium Tower here.
There are various important aspects of this case which you may
not be told about from other sources.
The fundamental trouble has been the failure
to decide clearly what the tower is for. It has not been appreciated
that the tower's design should be looked at from two points of
view—from outside and inside. From outside it would be a
landmark, symbol of what? From inside it would be a viewing point;
but to enable people to view what in particular?
At a very early stage—in late 1995—Virginia
Bottomley, the responsible Minister at the time, came to Portsmouth
and said that we must have a design competition. We were very
pleased. It was what we had been asking for; but nothing came
of it. Various spurious reasons were given—it would take
too long, a laughable reason seeing that that was at the end of
1995.
DESIGN—NOT
JUST AESTHETIC
In 1996 three of us were invited to the offices
of Sir Norman Foster to see what their ideas were. To our surprise
they had done a lot of work on the design—to the extent
that they knew how deep the piles would have to be. Their design
symbolised a dockyard crane with a viewing platform at the top,
at the required 150 metres accessed by lift, but, crucially, it
had a several layered viewing complex as it were in the crane
driver's cabin at a much lower level at 40 or 50 feet accessed
by escalator. They had grasped the essential point—which
nobody else has—that what is unique and really exciting
here is the sheer volume and variety of boat and ship movements
on the harbour, not really appreciated from a great height—they'd
just be insects on a pond. There is incomparably more going on
on the water here than say the London river, Liverpool or Plymouth.
At present there is nowhere the public can see it from, certainly
nowhere where they can have a drink or a meal and watch it.
Fosters had realised that the public might like
to go to the top viewing platform and enjoy the distant views—once;
but probably never again. You'll be able to see Bognor Regis on
a clear day; but who will want to see it again? But the lower
level complex with bar and restaurant taking in the panorama of
the harbour's activities would be a place people might well want
to go once a week.
The reason why various potential operators have
walked away is because the design is wrong, not just aesthetically,
but functionally in terms of a place where you can "pack
them in".
Fosters had also realised that the dockyard
itself was the reason for Portsmouth being here and the crane
was the best symbol of the yard. The current design—the
spinnaker, the image of a sailing yacht, is not as typical of
Portsmouth as of many neighbouring harbours. Portsmouth is only
secondarily a yachting place. It is above all a working harbour
and that's its fascination.
THE TRANSPORT
& WORKS ACT
Then there is the business of the Transport
& Works Act under which permission has to be obtained to build
in the water. If the plan had been to site the tower on land—which
it could easily have been (its proposed site is only a few feet
offshore), all this would have been unnecessary. Furthermore Portsmouth
have chosen, for some unknown reason, Berkeley Festival Waterfront
Company, the developers of the adjoining Gunwharf site, as their
agents in the negotiations with the DETR about the T&W Act.
And Berkeleys deal via their solicitors Cameron McKenna. So discussions
go from Portsmouth via Berkeleys to Cameron McKenna to the DETR
instead of direct. Not surprisingly it is taking a long time.
And although Berkeley's are contributing £3 million to the
cost, the building of the tower is not really in their interest.
It will spoil the view from their buildings.
It remains a mystery why the Fosters design
was never seriously taken up, and even who commissioned it. In
our view simply to have had Fosters on board would have been a
big boost to the city, quite regardless of the superiority and
ingenuity of their design.
You will be told by others of the spurious choice
given to the public. It started off as choice of designs from
the German firm LAP "who have designed more towers around
the world than anyone else". It turned out that they were
simply the structural engineers. The choice was between three
designs all from the local firm of HGP who have never designed
a tower anywhere!
June 2000
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