DIY cafe at Ocset

7pm - but come much earlier if you want to help cook

I was just in the posh clothes shop on st clements and the building's owner was in there canvassing support from the ladies in there for the planning meeting tomorrow (?) going on about what a classy area st clements could be (because there's a piano shop there?) if she was allowed to go ahead with her crappy redevelopment. Good luck!!

In fact, it's true that St Clements is quite a nice area to be. The piano shop is irrelevant. I can't understand why Ocset thinks it should have priority over the actual owner of the building, even if Ocset and Bettysnake disapprove of her ideas.

Dear Sadie,
The point is surely that a new expensive housing development (which I assume is what the owner wishes to put there, in order to make maximum profit for herself out of it? Correct me if I'm wrong) is pretty much a 'dead' development - it's not a new, DIY, exciting community space with the potential to be used by hundreds of locals, but just another expensive property whose price will rise and rise - just another closed front door where an open one could have been. We have enough new 'quality' development happening in Oxford unaccompanied by adequate provision of shared community space to worry when we lose the chance of grabbing something like OCSET. The ethos that this kind of thinking is more right than the entrepeneurial wishes of a private owner challenges the whole capitalist mindset - and that might be a bigger point to get one's head around!!
Plus - St Clements may have been swanky several years ago, but it isn't now (though receiving some swankification recently in the addition of some nice new eateries) - for one thing, its heavy traffic load means that no building on it can stay looking good for long. The increased visitors to the strip thanks to OCSET would be good for local businesses (the Post Office & small newsagents, for example) - and add more cheery colour to an often cramped and polluted street. Oxford is crying out for something like OCSET - why do we have to try and crush it because we don't think it looks right?

“Quite a nice area to be” isn’t quite the same thing as “swank”, is it ?
The future of this property will be decided by the planning department of the democratically elected council (which includes Green members) and by the actual owner of the property. Anyone who seriously believes that the Council should requisition private property for community use should try putting up candidates for the local elections.
Meanwhile, the question remains why Ocset people should assume there might be priority over normal procedures for their own ideas.

what offended me about the owner of the property was that the jist of what she was saying was that she was pissed off with the proper planning procedures because people kept on raising valid objections through the democratic channels to her horrid development