AVRUPA TIMES/ENFIELD-Building for the Future. A planning application has been submitted to provide a new major makerspace hub at Meridian Water providing affordable workspace for hundreds of workers.Building BloQs is one of the Council’s key partners on Meridian Water – its flagship £6bn project - and will play a major role in providing creative manufacturing workshop space while the development is being constructed and beyond. If agreed the proposals would see Building BloQs move into the existing vehicle testing building which will be converted to provide more than 30,000 square feet of manufacturing workshop space with capacity for more than 1,000 workers across five major departments - Engineering, Computer Numerical Control, Wood, Metal and a Fashion Studio.
Workers would have access to more than £1million worth of light industrial equipment as well as new skills training facilities a waterside café, gardens, shop and event space easily accessible to Enfield residents.
Enfield Council’s £6 billion Meridian Water scheme is seeking to provide 10,000 homes and 6,000 jobs and to create 8.2 hectares of parkland in the Lea Valley over the coming 25 years. Enfield Council has taken control of the vision and delivery of Meridian Water to ensure that local people are the principal beneficiaries. It aims to provide thousands of affordable homes and quality jobs in Enfield as well new schools, community and health services, nurseries, shops and youth and leisure facilities.
The Leader of Enfield Council, Cllr Nesil Caliskan, said: “Building BloQs is a vital partner and this planning application seeks to provide them with flexible and affordable open access workshop space. In doing so it will increase the amount of space and facilities available to support freelance designers, makers, and small businesses while Meridian Water grows around it – and for many years to come.“Meridian Water has always been about jobs as well as homes and, if agreed, this planning application will play a major role in helping use achieve our aspiration of providing a range of good quality creative jobs on the site.”
Al Parra from Building BloQs said: “ Building BloQs and Enfield Council have today reached a truly exciting moment in our project to make affordable, manufacturing workspace available in Enfield. We trust that our robust planning application will carry the day, the granting of which will fire the starting pistol on the building of a truly remarkable facility.”
The Council has set out a clear vision for the project which puts placemaking at the heart of the project. The Council has focussed on three pillars of placemaking: Parklife on Your Doorstep, Your Place to Make and Create, and Mixing Uses, Animating Streets.
The partnership with Building BloQs is a strategic fit with the development’s Your Place to Make and Create placemaking pillars as set out in its vision document.
Prior to all the site being developed the Council is using its landholding to accommodate meanwhile uses that promote placemaking.
The Council has a deal in place with Building BloQs to provide a new maker-space hub and is in advanced stages of negotiations to bring a film studio/theatre space to Meridian Water.
The Building BloQs project is part of a series of interim projects that will play a significant role in supporting the regeneration of Meridian Water.—It will play a key role in defining the character of the area through placemaking and bringing unused and underused sites into use ahead of advance of longer term regeneration and development plans.