黑洞社区

St Modwen Developments has beaten both a consortium made up of Persimmon and Wimpey and US brownfield land specialist Cherokee to build a 4000 home urban village on the site of a derelict south Wales BP oil refinery.

The Coed Darcy Partnership has selected the midlands based company as preferred developer for the scheme, which will transform the former Llandarcy refinery next to the M4 at Neath. The Persimmon/Wimpey consortium and Cherokee International Services made up the rest of the shortlist.

The project to build the new settlement, which has been dubbed Coed Darcy, is expected to take 20 years to complete.

A spokesman for the Coed Darcy Partnership, which is made up of the Welsh Assembly Government, Neath Port Talbot council, BP and the Princes Foundation, said that St Modwen would partner with other developer to build the homes once it had secured planning permission and provided the infrastructure for the site.

St Modwen will use a masterplan for the 400 ha (1000 acre) site, using a traditional street pattern drawn up by the Prince鈥檚 Foundation, as the template for the regeneration of the site.

A partnership spokesman said: St Modwen was chosen because the partners felt they were best placed to deliver the site in keeping with the key emphasis of the development 鈥� producing a sustainable community. The aim is to create a community not a housing estate and where the focus is on people rather than cars, with facilities for residents to live, play, work and go to school.

鈥淎lthough this is by no means a 鈥渄one deal鈥� and there remain a number of issues to resolve the project is poised to make a significant stride forward. The Coed Darcy Partners are looking forward to working with St. Modwen to see their exciting proposals develop into detailed plans and to seeing the full potential of this site realized.

Bristol based house builder Edward Ware Homes have already been appointed to build a pilot phase of the project consisting of 194 homes on a 4.2 ha (10 acres) section of the site.