Cardiff makes a real good read | 13 Oct 2006 |
The SD2 (St David's 2) Development will completely transform Cardiff city centre. The £535m project will include a major John Lewis departmental store and a significant number of other retail outlets including nine new stores, 93 shops, cafes, restaurants, bars, 300 residential apartments, 3000 car parking spaces and other public amenities, including a new civic library. The project, which will re-create an area of nearly 90,000 sq m, will generate 1000 construction jobs, 2000 permanent jobs and is due to be completed in 2009. SD2 will extend the city's shopping centre to nearly 130,000 square metres, making it one of the largest shopping destinations in the UK and designed to complement the Wales Millennium Centre and the Millennium Stadium.
The new civic library will be an iconic, six-storey, 5,110 sq m building, offering a state-of the art service. The ground floor will be given over to up-market retail outlets. The development time-table posed a problem for the library service however. How was the local authority to continue operating the library out of a city centre location with the existing library building listed for demolition early in the re-development programme?
The SD2 Partnership came up with the answer. They would jointly fund the construction of a temporary modular building sited on a plot of land in Bute Street, just half a mile from the old library building. This would clear the area for development and at the end of two years the building will be carefully dismantled and sold on. The total cost of building and equipping the temporary library will be £3m, including the cost of a specialist company moving all the books into the building.
Neath Abbey based modular building specialists Wernick Buildings won the contract to construct and erect the two adjacent, double storey, factory made buildings, which comprise 74 modules delivered over a ten day period. "There was a reaction from some of the companies that overlook the site when they heard that we had specified temporary buildings", stated Richard Hinton the SD2 project manager. "However, their fears were quelled when they saw the building starting to take shape. There was also concern that the lorries delivering the modules would be stacked up along the adjoining main road waiting to be off-loaded, but again these concerns proved to be unfounded because Wernick, who are very experienced at organising this type of project, managed the deliveries very well."
The Wernick Group have more than 70 years experience in the design and manufacture of modular buildings that are suitable for semi-permanent or permanent structures up to three storeys high. Their steel framed buildings can be finished with a traditional brick skin, or a cladding system, that together with a pitched tile clad roof gives an attractive appearance that can out perform more traditional methods in many ways.
Richard Hinton continued, "We decided on a system of modular construction based on the parameters of cost and speed of construction. Wernick won the contract because they were able to meet these two crucial aspects of the project. They will be on site for just 19 weeks"
The entrance to Cardiff's new library
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