The entire car park at The Parade will close for 11 days for health and safety reasons whilst work on the new Waitrose store is completed.
The car park is owned by Aberdeen Asset Management and managed by Cheshire East Council.
Speaking at a meeting of Alderley Edge traders, James Howard, Parking Services Manager at Cheshire East Council, explained "The current situation (where about 15 parking spaces out of 53 are currently blocked off) is going to go on until the 31st May and then the second and final phase lasts until the 11th June."
He added "Under the terms of the lease they have the right to close it to do work on the supermarket whenever they need to do it and there's nothing we can do about it."
Gary Morrison of Wienholts commented "I am just amazed, surely the correct management of the situation would be to provide some temporary parking, not just take it away and do nothing. That is just chaos waiting to happen."
Diane Smith, Town Centre Manager at Cheshire East Council responded "There's no obligation on the owner of the ground to provide alternative parking."
Gary Morrison also attended the Parish Council meeting on Monday, 12th May, to ask whether the Parish Council had made any arrangements for temporary parking during this period, such as on the Chorley Hall Lane playing fields, on Clifton Street where the residents parking scheme is in place or by extending the Ryleys Lane car park into the park.
Cllr Frank Keegan said "This will be an enormous issue for the first half of June. When Stef Cordon (Officer at Cheshire East Council responsible for parking) comes on Thursday I am going to take up with her the fact that retailers get a relief from their rates for that period. We have the ability as a Council to give a refund in rating because the footfall has the potential to be appalling in that period."
Having discussed Gary's proposal for a temporary car park the Parish Council agreed to request that Cheshire East create alternative long stay parking at Chorley Hall playing fields.
Cllr Frank Keegan said "I'll ask them to put some matting down and allow free parking for the duration of the works and then allow the field to recover before the start of the new football season."
Comments
Here's what readers have had to say so far. Why not add your thoughts below.
What are the health and safety reasons for closure ?
What are the health and safety issues? Why can't waitrose pay for the work to be done after hours? Surely they can afford it?
They are creating 45 new jobs... what about all the jobs that will be lost as further business close down?
When the car park in front of Waitrose shuts, that'll just add to the problem.
Parish Councillor Mel Connor was the proposer of using the Chorley Hall Lane playing field as a summer/temporary car park.
A good idea, imho.
A very large number of cars can park there. after all, the footy season is over.
She put the idea forward and the ward councillor has put the idea to CEC (CEC 'own' the land after all; actually you own it but CEC control it).
Hopefully CEC will say 'damn good idea, go for it'!
The ground there can be wet in places, but mostly it is fine; during the May Fair the land was used as a car park.
As an individual, I'd say that if CEC either say no, or take forever to decide, let's just do it!
I am told that if we do it, many of the traders will tell their workers to park there; free!
What's your opinion?
I am sure that their project planners, if they so wished, could by operating out of hours and using weekends keep the carpark open.
They have prepared a plan that gives maximum disruption, inconvenience and cost to the rest of the village for 11 days, then when they re- open expect everyone to flood through there doors and spend money.
As a small bussiness owner in the village we have felt the effect of the reduced parking, so unless either Waitrose is prepared to reconsider for the good of all, or additional parking is provided more bad news for the smaller shops of the village.