Caro Wilson writes:
Please do take the time to study the details of the planning application and add your comments.
Readers may not be aware that before 44a Mill Road was the Sally Ann’s shop it was Fine Fare, Cambridge’s first self-service supermarket.
Before that it was The Playhouse, Cambridge’s first purpose-built cinema.
Do take note of its pedimented roof line and do go and take a look at the side wall where generations of children waiting for the Saturday film show carved their initials and made holes in the brick work with their copper pennies.
Read all about the history of this important building 44a Mill Road on the Capturing Cambridge website, compiled by members of the Mill Road History Society
Your comments on the planning application on the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning portal could help to persuade the owners of this site to preserve as much as possible of its important heritage.
See also Redeveloping the Mill Road Playhouse Cinema, 26th September 2020, on the Lost Cambridge blog.
Whilst you may add comments below, these will not be seen by officers of the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning partnership, nor be taken into consideration by the Cambridge City Council Planning Committee.
Cambridge City Council have approved this, as expected: details here.
The Decision Notice contains a rather weak ‘informative’ (not a condition):
One of the two co-related applications has been withdrawn, for some reasons:
/some reason/ , I meant.
This looks like it is from Aldi. The company making the planning application seems to do a lot of work for Aldi.
A Co-op rather than an Aldi it seems:
“I was about to assume it’d be yet another “Luxury apartments in the heart of Cambridge…”, so I asked one of the builders working there earlier and he said it’s going to be a Co-op supermarket. As it used to be Fine Fare in the 70s it’s a good reinstatement for the building.”
See this Mill Road History Facebook post, here.
See also this post on Capturing Cambridge for a fuller history of this building. – Web Editor.
Can confirm the Co-op is listed on the notices now up for the application for off-licence alcohol sales. Agree this is a nice outcome given the building’s history; especially if it comes with a sympathetic fix to the frontage.