Redevelopment plans in East Barnwell moved forward last week as Cambridgeshire County Council and Cambridge City Council exchanged contracts for the sale of the East Barnwell Community Centre Site and Barnwell Road Library.
The sale of the dated East Barnwell Community Centre Site and East Barnwell Library to Cambridge City Council is part of their multi-site regeneration project on Newmarket Road, which aims to deliver significant social and economic benefits to the area through the delivery of affordable housing, a new community centre, library and preschool.
Cambridgeshire County Council will contribute £500,000 towards the redevelopment costs, in addition to the sale of its current community centre and library, and in return will receive two 125-year peppercorn leases for new library and preschool spaces within the newly constructed development.
While the existing library is single-glazed with a flat roof and static shelving, the new building, built to modern building regulations, will be much more sustainable, benefiting from greater energy efficiency and heated via an air source heat pump.
There will be accessible public toilets on site and facilities will also include flexible shelving units, which can be moved to create space for events like Storytime and Rhymetime and will offer more meeting spaces and study bays.
The new community centre will be owned by the Cambridge City Council, with an arrangement in place that will enable the community centre to use library space and the library to host arts events in the larger space of the community hall (such as for The Library Presents). As well as providing a greener, more attractive setting, the shared space will mean key library functions like book collection and returns can remain open for longer.
The relocation means the community centre and library can remain open throughout the building works, minimising the time the library service will be unavailable to the time needed to transfer books, computers and materials to the new building.
The area will also be home to a newly constructed, purpose-built facility for Seesaw Pre-school, which will be leased to the county council. Currently, the pre-school is situated in temporary accommodations at The Galfrid Primary School.
Councillor Alex Bulat, vice-chair of Cambridgeshire County Council’s Communities, Social Mobility and Inclusion Committee said: “Exchanging contracts on the sale of the current outdated Barnwell Road Library building is an exciting and important step towards being able to offer the residents of East Barnwell a new, modern library building that’s better able to help their community to prosper.
“The new library, supported by our dynamic libraries team, will offer more rounded services to the local community including events, performances and workshops, accessible meeting and study spaces and be a vibrant community hub.”
Cllr Gerri Bird, Executive Councillor for Housing at Cambridge City Council, said: “This is an exciting time for East Barnwell. We’ve just started work on building 120 new council homes, replacing 18 outdated flats with a total of 48 social rented homes, and 72 homes available at around 80% of market rents. Wherever we build these much-needed new homes, we work to ensure that the right facilities are also in place to support our communities, and working with the county council to provide the library, as well as the community centre and pre-school, is a key part of delivering for the local community.”
