Plans were exhibited today for 570 apartments alongside Napier Road, replacing three vacant low-rise office buildings. You can view the consultation materials online here. Proposals include four “mansion house” blocks of eleven storeys, with 56 parking bays behind, together with some private courtyard space. This is the latest instalment of the flat-building frenzy sweeping the town, but is it working for Reading?
The scheme will significantly change the outlook of the town from Kings Meadow. It will shield the modern glazed office blocks of Forbury Road with a residential curtain of the same height. As a build-to-rent scheme, a slew of additional tenant features are proposed including lounges, gyms and co-working spaces. Of more interest to planners will be the affordable homes contribution, which at 30% is in line with the maximum achieved by the council for such developments.
The buildings are unlikely to irk too many neighbours – angry from Caversham aside – on the basis that there really aren’t many nearby. Thames Lido is the closest to being impacted by any possible shadowing, but they hosted the exhibition and it would be a strange turn of events if they protested at a thousand new customers setting up home on their doorstep. The adjacent Thames Quarter is itself an eleven storey block of flats so “a bit rich” would probably be the response to any objection. Councillors and resident groups may bemoan the height, but the developer’s position at the event was that lopping off incremental storeys as you progress east wouldn’t do much for the aesthetics of the whole scheme, and would come at the cost of viable affordable housing. It’s probably a reasonable defence.
Aside from the affordable housing, the developer would also set back a further three metres from the road to leave space for “the tram line”. In practice, it’s the council retaining the option for the MRT that was abandoned some years ago. The recent news of the major development by Lonza at Thames Valley Park in Earley may reopen the debate of a Thames-side Tramlink bridge/tunnel to Thames Valley Park, which could now serve the business park, a park & ride, Tesco, this new Napier Road residential quarter and Reading Station – something surely approaching a viable proposition. There was also talk of subsidising improvements to the children’s play area and a new pedestrian crossing.
The colour scheme proposed is a succession of pastel shades. It seems to be the fashionable style, with the Soane Point refurbishment on Market Place now under construction with the same approach. In fact, Soane Point’s developers gave the planning committee multiple choice on the ordering of the coloured blocks, with red, grey, beige, red being their chosen permutation. Napier Court has missed this memo with a rogue grey, beige, red, grey, grey, beige, red, grey formation. But they’ll probably be happy enough to divert the planning conversation onto colour-wheel combinations.
More broadly, readers might ponder the success of the residential revolution in the town centre, with many hundreds of flats having been already delivered. It was supposed to provide much-needed housing for locals and keep prices reasonable, but is it just a case that London-leavers provide an insatiable stream of demand? It was supposed to revitalise the high street with additional footfall, but news of struggling retailers and the loss of a key independent recently in The Grumpy Goat tells a different story. It’s becoming more challenging for me to continue to assert the case for these apartment schemes when the contention is reduced to “things would be worse if we hadn’t built them”.
Ultimately though, this is a vacant, narrow plot of redundant low density buildings. If this development can provide high quality, safe buildings, with good living standards in environmentally-friendly homes for a new community of 1000 people, with a nice view of the meadows to open their curtains to, then you can’t really argue. But I’d far rather be writing about new places to go and new things to do that would benefit existing residents as well as new arrivals. There are snippets here and there – covered last time, but without some greater imagination, and a step change in leisure provision – looking hopefully towards The Oracle’s department store space and the interminable Gaol saga – you have to ask yourself, what will all these new residents spend their money on? Maybe the answer’s obvious? Rent.
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Reading-on-Thames 
I just wish there was at least an ounce of design in these proposals. Or any of the proposals we see for flats upon flats in RDG. No thought of making something look pleasant on the eye or stand out from neighbours. Just boring, beige stuff that will look dated in 5 years or less. At least these balconies will have something to look at unlike the large majority of developments in the town.
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Superbly written and certainly concur with your thoughts. I have long been pro growth and a champion for additional housing for locals and the next generation of dwellers, but where is the trickle down investment / desire for commercial enterprise to capitalise on the larger footfall .. and why is this not materialising?
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Thank you! Yes, it’s frustrating isn’t it. Will someone just build us a covered market already?!
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I am for all developments in the town. The MRT idea is new to me. Where would it go beyond the station? I can’t imagine there is room to build anything to the West. The whole idea seems fairly pointless, so why keep space in the plans for it.
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Basically there’s space for one additional lane, which could be an inbound bus lane. There’s never a traffic jam heading east along there as it’s a dead end, but at busy times there is a queue westbound due to traffic leaving Tesco queuing to get onto the station roundabout. So a westbound bus lane/tram lane from Tesco back into town would zoom past the queues. With a link over/under Kennetmouth you could connect to the business park and park and ride and have a fast and frequent bus/tram link from the station to and from Thames Valley Park. The bridge across the Kennet was controversial and rejected by Wokingham some years back but there was implication if it was a proper tram rather than just a bus bridge they might consider it. Or a tunnel.
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Also, the comments reply format has changed and I can’t pick a silly name anymore, I’m just Anonymous
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Sorry, I just inherit whatever wordpress has built!
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Yet another collection of coffin-sized flats to function as dormitories for commuters, until they need health services, schools, shops and places to socialise.
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Genuine question why aren’t they building/developing leisure activities. Surely any bowling operator/insert inane event to kill an afternoon with kids, looks at a list of biggest towns & cities and starts there. Why does Bracknell/Wokingham/Basingstoke seemingly have more to do than us.
I’d honestly like to hear your thoughts?
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I’d equally perplexed. We’ve been unlucky with a few specific proposals falling through. The land value is higher in Reading, which presumably makes it harder for the numbers to stack up for potential new operators, and seemingly easier to get a return from residential. I think the council could actively manage its own property to get the operators it wants – I believe this is the route Wokingham has taken with its kids soft play and bowling locations – maybe they’re accepting below market rate to have the occupiers they want. That’s speculation on my part. But potentially Reading Council could do this at its civic centre redevelopment if it was minded to do so?
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They really need to do something about flood management down on Napier Road, now that there’s so many people likely to be living there, starting to approach a few thousand.
As for leisure facilities, those will come.
Until 5 years ago, the bit of land between the Thames, train tracks and Caversham Road felt like a badly neglected space, with a few offices, and that’s about it. If all the plans were to go ahead, It’d be home to at least 5,000 people, which is a massive change.
Today, if you’re setting up leisure facilities there, you’re going to have to work hard to turn a profit, you’d have to rely entirely on commuters. The sheer gravity of so many people moving into the area, probably predominantly young based on the type of housing, will see some interesting leisure developments over the coming decade.
Incidentally, it’s likely that there’s Viking remains around there. Reading was a Viking Winter base in 870, they built a fortified location was between the Kennet and the Thames, Vastern is an old English word for stronghold, around that part of town is thought to be the most likely location for the camp based on descriptions
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Thank you for sharing. I presume archeology will be part of the process?
Let’s hope you’re right on new leisure facilities – the fear is that any given site can deliver more value through residential meaning those facilities never materialise.
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I can’t see how the proponents of ‘new flats will revitalise the town’ can sleep at night with the Grumpy Goat closing hot on the heels of the loss of Great Expectations, The Horn, and the Sun Inn. The latter two units are still empty now, a year later.
Reading is still a desirable place to live, but it’s getting difficult to explain why to others. If those behind this development get their way, Reading will be nothing but flats owned by ex-Londoners and vape shops, with the rest of the housing derelict, rented by the people delivering the pizzas and kebabs.
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Thanks for commenting. Agree that the “revitalisation” doesn’t seem to be quite progressing in line with the increase in central apartments. That’s kind of my point in the last couple of paragraphs. Hopefully your stated fears don’t play out quite how you’ve described. Specifically on The Sun Inn, that does look set for a big investment, refurbishment and expansion to become a Brasserie Blanc, so that’s one promising new dawn 🙂
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Don’t mind it in general. Would prefer less colour variation – I don’t get the aversion to singular colours ( mansion blocks of the past would all be of the same brick) and it just makes it look patchwork. Pick a good quality red brick for all the blocks! They NEED to address the drop off problem with the tower next door here, I see a couple of spaces but suspect not enough and are round the back. All the residential entrances from the rear is a bit off in terms of active frontage along the road too.
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I lived at Gerrard house Gerrard street reading RG1 . They said it was lovely. 4 flats were given to reading for 4 tenants. The rest was privately bought except they failed to tell them and us they sold them privately to people who AIR BB THEM ALL HELL BROKE OUT IN THERE IT WAS THE AIR BB HAVING PARTIES DRUG DEALERS AND NEEDLES PEOPLE GETTING ROBBED I THE LIFTS . This was everyday night was off the planet but they had no management there’s they’d had enough . Enjoy if you’re going to buy £ but Air bb will ruin it !
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I’d heard of issues there on Reddit. I hope you’re ok.
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[…] Napier Court – is railside scheme on the right track? […]
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Aesthetically the Forbury Road offices look far better, so yes, it will be a shame to lose the view of them from Kings Meadow.
It’s a real shame that since Grenfell cladding has gone completely out of fashion. Brick is so boring. And of of course the exterior “design” is just horizontals and verticals to save money. Far cry from the sweeping steel roofs on the existing Napier Road flats.
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