I'm not sure we know the exact height this 11 storey building will be so please correct me if I'm way out when I say 200ft. There will also be two floors underground so we may not see it above the hoardings for a number of months. But McAlpine have set up camp and things will probably start getting noisy soon! This is from yesterday...

You wouldn't believe how excited I am at seeing that photo... bring on the cranes !!!

It might not be the building many of us would wish for, but it's a decent addition to the city, and it fills a gap of sorts between all the mid-rise towers we have on Newport Road, Churchill Way and Bute Terrace. A bit of density is a good thing for any major city.

I wish someone would take a hammer or two to that f-ing Rapport building behind it as well.

get one of the tower cranes to accidentally drop something on it

I hate to say this but I sort of like the Rapport building. Following the loss of the Empire Pool there's very little 1950s architecture left in Cardiff. It's very shabby and down at heel but it's a sweet building.

Shame to lose a popular and badly needed bit of green space in central Cardiff to build a particularly crummy office block, especially since it could have been built on the Rapport car park instead.

Capitalism at its greediest and most idiotic.

do you know the history of this site? it was a car park 3 years ago. the green space was always temporary and was always going to be built on.

but yes, i agree, it would have been preferable to keep the green space and demolish rapport in its place

I agree, the green space was a lovely surprise edition when SD2 was complete. Would have been great to build on the Rapport site and add a couple more floors to reaccommate Derek and ever the Traders (bay window et all! )

I have to admit though the really problem with this end of town is the cronic congestion trying to get from one side of the City Centre to the other, only discovered recently that I'm not supossed to drive from Wood St into St Marys St

I have to say I'm really excited about this going up. When was the last time Cardiff had a 11/12 storey single use office block of this size constructed?

I wonder where all the earth they are digging up is going? Didn't the earth removed for the John Lewis underground car park get used for landscaping on Lamby Way? Such are the things that occupy my tiny mind.....

Karl

you are not alone with these thoughts. one question (totally unrelated) is 'why don't you ever see baby pigeons?'

If anyone is wondering what happened to the trees that were on the Admiral site they have been replanted at the Marl in Grangetown.

One you could help me with Jantra. Why is there only one Monopolies Commission?

There hasn't been a Monopolies Commission for over 10 years. The Monopolies and Mergers Commission was replaced by the Competition Commission in 1999.

Have you ever been told you take life too seriously??

Several times! I do realise that the post was just meant to get a reponse from Jantra.

it's a busy old site..

That's good, I was actually worrying about that. It would have been a terrible shame to cut them down only two years after they were planted.

Crane and digger porn !!!!

Where have all those words on the hoarding come from, who's choice were they ? They seem a little random unless I'm missing something.

And nobody else has noticed how funny that post is ?

Here's an update of the Admiral site, the photo was taken from Cineword cinema on the weekend ...

it is still funny, after all these years

Im sure this pic is quite old, last i checked, the grounds were digged in quite deep

FFS where's the grass gone!

Replaced by diggers and cranes...I loves it

An update from the Admiral site ...

I spy a crane base...

Those supports look mightily iPodlike. Surely they aren't in view on completion?

Props are temporary supports stopping the pressure from the surrounding earth causing the basement Walls to cave in. Once the basement (and maybe ground floor) slabs are poured then these can be removed. Good to see some proper construction in the centre of Cardiff after the post SD2 lull! (and thanks for the progress picture James )

Thanks for the pic...nice to see progress, and a crane about to go up !

Another Admiral pic for you. There are now two cranes going up ...

Cheers James, really appreciate the photos while I'm away...missing Cardiff loads at the moment and can't wait to come back for Christmas.

Two crane bases ! Hopefully they'll both be up by the time I come back

first crane being put up now! I'm hoping to get into town later for a photo

Here's a pic of the crane being assembled ...

Wow, cool picture...

It seems James beat me to it but nonetheless.



Click to enlarge.

Always good to see photos, keep em coming!

Also, you get a good view of the crane from park place, it appears before you as a natural focal point at the end of the road. Hopefully the building, once finished, will have a similar effect. Do we know if the crane is at its full height? Or how tall the final building will be relative to the crane as it stands now?

Awesome photo !

Me ... the crane is now fully assembled and there's a base for a second crane on the site too.

If you have a look here on the Glenn Howells Architects website then there's some elevations which show how tall the Admiral building will be in relation to the CIA, Cineworld, Charles Street, etc.

Second tower crane now being installed on site!

Feels kind of odd seeing cranes int he city center again!

2 more will be going up at the student castle by the prison - for more student castle. Does anyone know the height of this one they are about to build, was it 8 or 9 floors?
Reckon our best hope for multi crane areas must be the sports village - mind you I've reckoned that on and off for the best part of 10 yrs now!!

Here's a photo of the second crane being assembled today ...

I reckon the site must look a right mess at the moment. Wouldn't fancy working there.

seems odd that they have 2 tower cranes in such a small site. the only real reason must be they intend to crack on with development at a pace. likewise with student castle.

what did strike me today as I was driving through town was the number on for let signs along the newport road/fitzalan place

To let signs in Wales when a Tory Government is in Westminster - that sounds just about right eh Jantra. Same old tories ole chap.
Its is going to get worse much much worse with Georgie bwoy's Austerity.
See he made a 6 figure sum out of the sale of his Cheshire home recently.
The Bullington Boys they know what they are doing - looking after the corporate sector, they are paying less tax, the people are paying more - the rich are getting richer.
We playing too easy a game in Wales - we got to stop rolling over.
Shame we got a weak arse capital that is being rinsed by a city that made its money out of slavery and tobacco.

Not a particularly small site, and certainly not odd to have two cranes. Pretty standard for something like this.

the sad thing is some people think there is an alternative to the conservatives. there isn't. during 1997-2010 77k people never had a job in Wales - in 13 years 77k people did not work one single day. That is much worse than anything the Tories under Thatcher achieved, where 20k miners lost their jobs.

I could go on but there are some who just ignore facts and prefer political bluster and ideology

I thought one crane would have sufficient reach to cover the entire site. then again I don't really know enough about this sort of thing

The massive jacking up of unemployment happened under Thatcher. And it wasn't just miners who lost their jobs. That was when the whole incapacity gravy train started. There might be millions of people out of work but the only answer is to create jobs. The Conservatives don't seem to be doing too well on that front however they try and massage the figures. Why would the unemployment figures have been very different under the Tories? Remember Mr Lamont 'high unemployment is a price worth paying for low inflation'

You missed the point, which was that Wales does no better under labour yet done in Wales blindly follow the party 'because of thatcher'. The simple truth is more people never had a job whilst under labour. You also omit the fact that labour massaged the employment figured by over staffing the public sector. 1m jobs were created between 1997-2008, 800k in admin roles. They achieved that by borrowing 100bn more than the trend. In other words created needless jobs and got tomorrows taxpayer to fund it. Criminal

Under Thatcher and Blair the public sector filled in for an anaemic private sector that couldn’t create jobs. Both created masses of public sector jobs.

The historical long view is that 2/3rds of extra jobs post 1979 were in the public sector; the official stats are confused by utility privatisation under Mrs T or publicly funded private employers under Blair.

The conservatives used benefits as much as labour to keep people out of the labour market as well as both encouraging education post 16 again to again keep masses out of the labour market. But globalisation went a step further depressing wages at the bottom of the labour market and labour used tax credits to try and close the earnings gap.

Does Osborne have a plan? I doubt it as the truth of the matter is that the economy as presently arranged has very little use for the bottom third of the population even at a minimum wage level. Its a shit storm coming for some poor bastards.

The question for the Welsh government is how can it differentiate Wales from the rest of Europe to give us an edge. No politician in Wales seems to have a real plan or at the UK level for that matter.