“THE art of the possible” is the phrase that leaps out from the long-awaited masterplan for the Maltings and Central Car Park redevelopment.

While we’re being shown images of what this might look like in an ideal world, Wiltshire Council has accepted that it can’t be sure what will happen in terms of people’s shopping habits and the nation’s economic future.

Nothing is that certain any more, anywhere. If it ever was.

Having said which, there’s much to welcome in this wish-list of a document.

For starters, the acceptance that our coach park is a grotty, dilapidated disgrace.

And the requirement to create a wildlife-friendly riverside walkway to usher trippers into the city centre, with picnic tables, a tourist information booth, decent signposting, little shopping kiosks en route, and better public loos.

That element of the project alone would make a huge difference to Salisbury’s image as a welcoming city.

And actually, we need that 40metre wide green corridor around the main watercourse through the site.

Because here’s a sentence to consider: “The latest evidence from the Environment Agency shows an increased risk of river flooding to large parts of Salisbury city centre.”

Risk assessment work is ongoing, but unless shoppers are prepared to wade along the new ‘boulevard’ to the arcades in their wellies, resilience has to be built in to the scheme.

Reconfigured riverbanks are the planners’ answer – bearing in mind of course that the water has to go somewhere once it’s swooshed safely through the city centre …

I’d say there’s more than a nod to environmental necessity in this plan.

A new ‘pocket park’ outside the Playhouse instead of the current concrete grotto of gloom. Green roofs, ‘living walls’, solar energy panels on the new buildings … all wonderful.

But underpinning all these pious hopes, of course, is the expectation of commercial viability.

The Masterplan’s authors acknowledge the blow to the local economy that was the departure of Friends Provident.

One wonders where the young professionals at whom the new loft apartments will be aimed will actually work. Have you seen the number of offices being turned into flats all around us?

It’s also not clear where the relocated Sainsbury’s and job centre will fit, if at all, and I do hope no edge-of-town greenfield land is being eyed up for another superstore.

But obviously the report’s authors can’t afford to be too prescriptive as to the precise mix of uses that will occupy any “new group of commercial/leisure premises”.

They’re making the right noises about parking spaces (1,000), affordable homes (40 per cent), the need to protect existing retailers in the city centre and to create opportunities for independent pop-up shops and restaurants.

And no one can disagree with their judgement that Salisbury needs to offer a wider range of leisure experiences for residents as well as for tourists who need to be encouraged to stay overnight and spend their money here.

However, the artists, craftspeople and independent restaurateurs who might help to attract them will need cheap space, and developers don’t generally deliver that. An interesting conundrum.

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