 |
| No, it's not Anne Widdecombe |
For reasons we can only guess at, Carmarthenshire County Council has gone very quiet about Dai Greene, but a new love affair appears to be blossoming with someone who has a full head of hair and lots of gold.
Robbie Savage and a business partner recently received outline planning permission for a hotel at Meryl's favourite race course just down the road from her home in Trimsaran. The twinkle-toed former football player and several other notables, including planning consultant Stuart Owen, have now been shown around the Hub in Llanelli and given the run-down on the council's on-going development projects.
Mr Owen will be familiar to observers of the Carmarthenshire planning scene for his involvement in many of the county's more interesting planning applications, including a bitterly contested, controversial housing development at Waungilwen near Drefach Felindre. Councillors initially rejected that application, but miraculously overturned their own decision a few months later.
The council press release breathlessly tells us that Town Centre Manager Andrew Shufflebotham was on hand during the visit to outline the projects the county council is involved with.
Mr Shufflebotham said: “We have £60m in investment coming together. There is the £4m investment in the Library, the cinema in East Gate where the Odeon has bought the interest and it could become their flagship in the region, there’s Nando’s, and a brand new theatre at Y Ffwrnes. Town centres have to change and become more leisure oriented and 24/7.”
On the same day that the press office churned this out, Llanelli residents learned that the council's Grade II listed, art deco Elli Theatre is being axed. Presumably it was not sufficiently leisure oriented and 24/7. Why waste money in restoring this relic of days gone by when mega contracts could be awarded to a developer for a brand new theatre?
Also today listeners to Radio Cymru would have heard Llanelli councillors saying that parts of the town are becoming "like an open prison" (story in Welsh here from the BBC), but the press office was unable to find space to cover that news item.
Robbie hinted that another possible project will be a care village on part of the 18 acre site behind the planned hotel.
All of which will be a stone's throw from a mammoth executive housing development. Readers interested in local history may wish to peruse some back numbers from Caebrwyn's catalogue, beginning here.
Parts of Llanelli may be turning into an open prison, but there will definitely not be any riff-raff in Tre-Meryl.
0 comments:
Post a Comment