Key town centre car park fully reopens following archaeological investigation works linked to huge Greyfriars regeneration scheme
Archaeological investigation works are now complete at a large town centre car park in Northampton which was partially dug up by the council.
More than half of the Upper Mounts Car Park in Victoria Street has been closed since Wednesday September 2 by West Northants Council (WNC) to allow for archaeological trenching and site investigations to be carried out.
Around 160 spaces the of Upper Mounts' 310 spaces have been unable to drivers during the partial closure while a further 36 spaces at the nearby Newlands Car Park were also affected by survey work.
Large piles of rubble could be seen inside the cordoned off area within Upper Mounts.
WNC initially said investigations were expected to take up to two months and were undertaken ahead of the submission of a hybrid planning application for the Greyfriars regeneration scheme.
When the Chron visited the site on Monday October 19, we found the car park had reopened after six weeks.
A spokesperson for WNC said: "Upper Mounts Car Park was partially and temporarily closed from the evening of Wednesday 14 October to allow final works and the removal of site fencing to take place.
“The archaeological investigation works linked to the Greyfriars regeneration scheme have now concluded, and the car park has been fully reinstated and is now fully open.”
WNC said it communicates planned changes to council-operated car parks through a range of channels depending on the nature of the closure.
It declined to answer how the reopening of a car park is communicated.
Greyfriars is described by the council as the largest brownfield regeneration opportunity in Northampton and is being delivered in partnership with ECF.
The wider 25-acre regeneration scheme is expected to eventually deliver more than 1,000 homes alongside commercial, community, cultural and leisure spaces, new parks and improved public areas.
The first phase is expected to include more than 100 homes on the current Upper Mounts and Newlands car park sites, including townhouses, maisonettes and apartments centred around a community garden.#
On October 2 WNC announced that the Mayorhold Car Park in Lady’s Lane, the town’s largest car parks, has been closed for good, marking a loss of more than 1,000 spaces.
Doddridge Street Car Park, which serves around 77 vehicles, closed in March to make way for West Northamptonshire Council's (WNC) £9 million Four Waterside and Marefair regeneration scheme.
It later reopened, before closing again, and finally reopening again later in the summer.