Rob P wrote:Ah.. But we all remember how the Benjamin Britten luvvies scuppered the plans for a new Ipswich Airport at Bentwaters. Even the Grace Spitfire was too much for their delicate ears.
They don't seem to want anything.
The government’s initial intention was to build a comprehensive development – a whole new town with houses, schools, services and lots of employment – by encompassing the thousand-acre technical site as well as the domestic site. This was stopped by the county council on the grounds that this was an AONB – an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Apparently, no one considered the huge areas of outstandingly unnatural runways, concrete bomb shelters and ammunition dumps when making this decision.
It did seem for a while as though the county with no motorway and no city might just get an airport but, apparently, those living in some surrounding villages did not share that vision. Worries about the noise of commercial aircraft, from a site which had, until very recently, been home to some of the noisiest machines America owned, crushed the plan.
Then it appeared as though the Maharishi Foundation might buy the place to build what they called a University of Natural Law, but there was again too much local opposition to that. Presumably on the grounds that all those people meditating might bring too much peace and quiet to the area.
A final proposal saw the chance to remove the military buildings and runways and for the area to be landscaped. This would be funded by, and then would begin to fund the expansion of, a holiday village, with chalets designed to blend into the environment so that people could visit this area of outstanding natural beauty. That was vetoed, as trucks would be needed to take the rubble away and that might cause some short-term disturbance.