Recently in Canary Wharf Category

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I started a hare running with my (admittedly somewhat intemperate) remarks about Tower Hamlets a few days ago. I have had a huge response to this, both in public and in private - mostly in private, and mostly supportive of my spluttering sense of exasperation. I am particularly grateful to the last post on this blog from Phil, who offers the voice of reason in all of this. 

It is a febrile and fraught environment east of Bishopsgate, and no mistake.  And I cannot help but observe that the City of London has enough threats on its horizon without its immediate neighbour destabilising the fringes. So I stand by my remarks, although I do concede that I could have expressed my views more professionally.

As we gear up for the Place East London conference over in Stratford Town Hall later today, the forces of goodness and light begin to coalesce over in London E15.  We will find new paradigms for East Enders, I promise, and we will forge a new path for wealth creation for all.  

But I am reminded that it isn't always all a hotbed of positivity over on the east side.  There is, of course, that very special vortex of madness, that place which sensible people would all do well to avoid; that borough of which only the brave dare speak the name, a little like that of Lord Voldemort.  It is the rightful heir to the shenanigans at Liverpool and Lambeth of the 1980s.  I speak, but of course, of... Tower Hamlets.  

The lovely David Thame of EG called me to pick my brains about his upcoming feature for the magazine on the prospects for London regeneration schemes.  In a (somewhat breathless) list he was seeking intelligence on Elephant and Castle, the East End (Stratford, Bromley by Bow, Royal Docks) and Battersea Power Station ("just because something is up for sale", he asked, "does that mean there will be activity?") with Nine Elms generally.  Oh, and for good measure, Earls Court, Wembley, the Greenwich Peninsula, Canning Town, Lewisham Gateway and Brent Cross/Cricklewood.
 
Whew! I said.  Calm down dear, for goodness sake, you'll have a hernia!  
 
But he was seeking some proper thoughts on which of these could be serious prospects for progress in 2012, and which might end up moving a little slower, so of course I tried to be helpful.  But you won't be surprised to learn my prognosis was a little bleak.

I'm not clear at all as to how to report back on the Reg Ward Memorial event held in the West Wintergarden of Canary Wharf the other evening, hosted by Howard Dawber of the Canary Wharf Development Company.  It was quite quite extraordinary and, actually, if the truth be known, I still haven't quite recovered.  I feel rather overwhelmed about it all.
 
They were ALL there, you know: Lords, Ladies, Knights of the Realm, ex-cabinet ministers, mayors, ex-staffers, community leaders, journalists, assorted mad people, Sue Brown and all her devoted girls, Mrs Mop, Uncle Tom Cobbly and all.  And it was all so very fitting, given what an inclusive man Reg was, given his sweet nature, and his lovely manners.  They were all there.  And they all paid tribute.  One of the organisers later described the proceedings as a "Regfest", and that is exactly what it was, really.
 
Here are some snaps of me at the event. In the first picture I'm with the MC for the evening, David Donoghue, ex-head of corporate communications for the LDDC (and my mucker of 25 years). In the second shot I'm with Lorraine, the former LDDC receptionist (and a proper East-Ender) and Carl Hopkins, the man who launched over a thousand CPO orders in the Royal Docks to do the land assembly. (Was it legal? I asked Carl. He said he - a lawyer - and Reg had never bothered to find out!)  Carl is also a mucker and he later helped me with CPO advice at Kent Thameside.


 

I have been having a slightly tumultuous week. On Tuesday I managed to get locked on the roof of Urban and Civic (I kid you not) with Robin Butler and Tim Leathes. We had walked out onto the decking of the roof terrace to gossip about the neighbours when the door slammed shut in the wind. We all three had to lean over the railing and bellow in unison to attract the attention of Catherine in the office below (mercifully her window was open) to come and rescue us. And I suffer from vertigo! Could have been very serious that (but Robin had already had his blues guitar lesson that morning so the timing wasn't too disastrous). Needless to say, it caused much merriment.

 

Didn't last long! Of course the entire London community (and many others from elsewhere I guess; the LGA mob for starters) this week is recoiling in shock at the dreadful news of the sudden death of Simon Milton. What a terribly sad thing to have happened. Notwithstanding that Simon was a lovely man (always unfailingly kind to me, despite the fact that, when he was at Westminster and I was at Paddington, I had been a major irritant on numerous occasions) this will deal a pretty powerful body blow to London governance. As one of my correspondents put it rather pithily "it really leaves Boris in the s--t on the sensibleness front" and this certainly is the consensus abroad. I understand the funeral was yesterday. It will have been a deeply sad occasion.  It is very very sad to lose such a gentle and decent and competent public servant.  And it is very sad to lose yet another friend, both personally and professionally. 

 

People ask me for examples of good regeneration projects in the UK and I always cite Paddington Waterside (pictured left). Of course I am disgracefully biased, having invented the regeneration partnership there, and led it for six years.

The purist lobby within BURA would (and do) say that Paddington isn't strictly a regeneration project and is more properly defined as a property development project.

But I would argue that: the site had been blighted for decades (and had, you will remember, completely done for Trafalgar House); British Waterways had sold the land there three times (nice work if you can get it Mr Bensted); and - crucially - we would never have got the development away and attracted the level of private sector investment it eventually did, even in a rising market, had it not been for the fact that we firmly adopted a partnership approach, predicated on best practice in urban generation.