It's here! Public invited to Crescent Gardens plans consultation

How the former council headquarters at Harrogates Crescent Gardens may end up looking.

The event at Rudding Park Hotel on Thursday, February 14, sees directors and professional representatives of Harrogate developer Adam Thorpe’s company, ATP Crescent Gardens, appearing in person to answer questions from the public.

From 2pm to 7pm, there will also be sketches, plans and architectural drawings of the luxury £75 million redevelopment of the former headquarters of Harrogate Borough Council.

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But the consultation itself has already attracted criticism for both its location and form.Last week Harrogate Civic Society described the event as a glorified “exhibition” rather than a public consultation.

This week several readers got in touch with the Harrogate Advertiser. including a locally-based professional architect, to voice their concerns about the lavish project.

Richard T Hughes, principal landscape architect at Harrogate Landscape Design Associates, said: “I fail to see the design relevance in the context of a small North of England spa town.“I suspect that this design has the making of an irrelevant money pit that will be a great short?term benefit to a few and provoke horror and long?term loss for many more.”

But developer Adam Thorpe said the plans for £2m apartments, public gardens, a restaurant and an art gallery, were in the town’s interests.He said: “A huge amount of time has been taken to carefully design the individual residences in a way that combines the historic nature of the area along with desires of our clients, such as individual lifts from their car houses and how these are designed. “This scheme isn’t just the finest in the region, it’s a one of its kind outside London.”