Design was improved under Senator Cohen

Friday 30th September 2011, 3:00PM BST.

From J Messervy-Norman.
DURING the immediate run up to the Senatorial elections, we were met with a number of letters to the editor on a single page devoted to the subject of Portelet, most of which pointed a finger at Senator Freddie Cohen (JEP, 24 September) implying a suspicion that there was some kind of hidden political agenda at work in the final decision that he made.

There can be absolutely no doubt that as Environment Minister, Senator Cohen has made a dramatic improvement in the quality of design and use of traditional granite in modern Jersey buildings.

At Portelet, he can only be criticised for having placed too much trust in the nationally renowned architect, Sir Richard McCormack, who designed the scheme, which is smaller than the old holiday camp and obviously better than that approved in August 2005 by former Deputy Dorey and his committee (before Senator Cohen was elected).

Nevertheless, and since then, Senator Cohen, who has had to deal with planning officers who are not always good at following planning law and policy, has with complete integrity, done nothing less than to listen and act in the full interests of the people of this Island. This has been well demonstrated by his decisions to deny the large development at Greve de Lecq, the three ridiculous mansions at Le Catalet, St John and refusing on average, one in every three planning recommendations.

Above all, Islanders may be thankful for Senator Cohen’s refusal of all the planning applications he received for the Plémont holiday village, some against planning officers’ recommendations.

Further, in having ordered a public inquiry into the planning application at Plémont, he clearly did all he could to ensure the Plémont planning application is correctly dealt with, giving every chance for the demolition of the abandoned holiday camp buildings and returning the land to its former historic natural state.

1
oh boy!

September 30, 2011 at 4:02 pm

I don’t recall Deputy Dorey ever being President of IDC. Could it be that “Deputy Dorey and his Committee” was actually presided over by Senator Ozouf? I suggest when you are in as big a hole as Portelet is, you should stop digging. It surely can’t be that difficult for Senator Cohen to go public on who was President when the scheme was first approved, and then he just might get himself off the hook. He seems very reluctant to name names.

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2
tony

September 30, 2011 at 5:53 pm

Oh Pip, he of Radisson fame!! at least he was forward thinking with the knowledge of a “green award” as a future highlight,I don’t think.

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3
Realist

September 30, 2011 at 9:53 pm

Senator Cohen was under no illusions when he took on the poisoned chalice of Environment and worked hard at improving a previous committees’ decision to pass development on the Portelet site.I remember well the public pressure to get the old holiday camp demolished and have something or anything put there to replace it.Remember it had become an eyesore, mouldering away over several years, a tactic often used by developers to break the will of planning, through public pressure.You can’t blame either the previous committee, for bending under that public pressure and certainly not Senator Cohen,whom was left a thankless task of making the best of that earlier decision. I hope he is returned as a senator. He is,in terms of ability, integrity and hard work under pressure, one of those four senatorial candidates, whom deserve to be elected.Anyone whom has come across him knows that he is solid,immensely able, a proponent of social justice and the most capable of all candidates to represent Jersey’s interests abroad and in the UK.

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4
Pip Clement

September 30, 2011 at 10:39 pm

Sadly for Private Cohen I think the electorate have made up their minds and you are not for saving!

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5
oh boy!

September 30, 2011 at 11:15 pm

whom????!!! Learn some English man.

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6
Observer

October 1, 2011 at 11:46 pm

Unfortunately the apologists for Senator Cohen, such as J Messervy-Norman and his other campaign managers, miss the point. Senator Cohen may have put in place a couple of great initiatives (such as the Architecture Commission) to assist & promote high quality design but Senator Cohen himself has not improved design one iota. His decision making capacity has been terrible.

Indeed if you examine his track record over the last six years it is one of promoting inappropriately located bad design flouting the Island Plan and local character (such as Portelet, Barchester care home next to Airport and Belvedere at Five Oaks to name a few), while obstructing other schemes that are appropriate and achieve everything the Island Plan aims to realise.

The latest Cohen approved monstrosity is currently being unwrapped on the Esplanade and behind Sand Street.. the Ian Simpson UK Architects office block that towers over adjacent buildings and imposes a UK city solution into our Island. The contrast between the beatifully, sensitively, crafted Ogier House by an extremely capable Jersey Architect and the horrenously out-of-scale and alien UK Simpson Architects edifice could not be more dramatic.

Go on down there and look around – then decide if Senator Cohen has really made any difference – or if he has actually in reality been very destructive to our local sense of place and character. So much for the failures of his favoured UK Starch-itects – please let our local Jersey Architects who understand our Island have an opportunity!

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7
Pip Le Sueur

October 4, 2011 at 5:50 pm

Observer fails to mention that Ogier House was also approved by Senator Cohen. He further fails to mention that Ogier House’s environmental credentials were delivered at the insistence of Senator Cohen

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8
Victor Meldrew

October 14, 2011 at 8:12 pm

The JEP published yet another prominently placed letter today(14th Oct),though not online, knocking Senator Cohen for the Portelet development, with yet another close up photo.The address given by the author, “Le Bel Morin”in Maufant Village doesn’t exist.The nearest sounding name there is a road, called Le Bel Mourant.Surely if the author is who he says he is, he’d know how to spell his address correctly.As to Portelet,how about publishing a photo of the old holiday camp, which dominated the area before? Memories are short; we had forgotten what this demolished monstrosity looked like and what the previous committee had to face in adhering to that long standing footprint.Cohen deserves more. He’s the best man to lead in foreign affairs, has enormous ability and this should transcend petty politics and the very apparent focus on demeaning him.

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9
Victor Meldrew

October 17, 2011 at 11:42 pm

The “Peter Boyer” letter WAS a fake,now acknowledged as such by the editor of the JEP.
It’s scandalous that this will influence voting against Senator Cohen, let alone any candidate, when such subterfuge is given credence.There were six clear able senatorial candidates in the St.Helier hustings this evening and it’s disgraceful that they’ve got to fight for four places, when two of that previous six have been removed by a cabal of unalected district councillors.

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