WORK is moving on at pace at the Amazon distribution warehouse site on Redditch Eastern Gateway.
The steel skeleton of the structure has already been erected and the cladding is going on now.
The building dominates the surrounding area and the construction work has led to closures and traffic delays on the east bound carriageway of the A4023 Coventry Highway as the work progresses.
The structure is clearly visible from the road and so far there has been no word of any attempt to screen the building.
Campaigners fought a long and hard to prevent the development from going head before finally admitting defeat.
Worcestershire County Council had called the Eastern Gateway project a ‘game changer’ however initial hopes of creating a technology park on the site, which extends to both sides of the Coventry Highway, came to nought.
Instead the northern half of the site will be used by online giant Amazon as its latest distribution centre.
Although it’s called the Redditch Eastern Gateway, in fact only a tiny part of the development lies within the borough of Redditch.
The southern half falls within Stratford District and the northern within Bromsgrove district.
A routing strategy developed to deal with the increase in traffic generated by the site led to the widening of junction 3 of the M42 on the A435.
However site traffic travelling south will be routed through Redditch to the Crabbs Cross island and from there down the A448 Slough road past Studley to the junction at Spernall Ash.
From there it will rejoin the A435 before going through Coughton and Kings Coughton – where supermarket giant Aldi have applied to build another store – before reaching the Alcester bypass.
Traffic travelling west will continue to the Alvechurch Highway where it will either join the M42 at junction 2 or along the A38 Bromsgrove Highway to the M5.
