Waterfront set to open new car park

A new temporary car park is to be opened on Ipswich Waterfront early next year once the burned-out shell of the former St Peter's Warehouse is demolished.

IPSWICH: A new temporary car park is to be opened on Ipswich Waterfront early next year once the burned-out shell of the former St Peter's Warehouse is demolished.

Members of Ipswich council's development and planning committee gave permission for the short-term car park to operate for three years once demolition work and restoration work on a boundary wall is completed.

The park will hold up to 70 cars - and the pricing will have to be structured so it is prohibitively expensive to leave a vehicle there for more than four hours.

The permission runs out at the end of 2012, and there are hopes at that time there will be a full planning application for the redevelopment of a site which is seen as a key gateway to the whole Waterfront area of town.

Sitting between Stoke Bridge and St Peter's Church, for many years the Victorian warehouse was seen as a potential beacon for the future development of the Waterfront.

All that changed in a few hours on the night of April 13, 2000 when the building was ravaged by the most spectacular fire seen in Ipswich for years.

Redevelopment attempts have come to nothing over the years - partly because the site is next to the disused Paul's Maltings silo and partly because the warehouse was in a conservation area.

But now the site is to be cleared at the first stage in what is hoped to be a major tidy-up of the entrance to the Waterfront.