April 2011 Archives

Back in 2004 there was a rumour that the London Gate site in Hayes was going to be converted to residential units. Moreover, in what we assumed to be a homage to the record label, EMI who had its offices there, and to the late great Jimi Hendrix, one of the buildings was going to be painted purple and re-named .... wait for it....Purple Hayes.

But alas it never happened. News out this week though is that Dev Sec and Cathedral Group have acquired this site, and are now in the process of drawing up "radical" plans for a £250 million regeneration. This is how the site looked a few weeks back:

But the Hendrix connection hasn't been completley lost, consider that the deal was done via a special purpose vehicle called Purplexed.

The Middlesex Hospital site is owned by Kaupthing, Aviva and Exemplar. Or is it? Last week the FT reported  that Exemplar had struck a deal with the Hard Rock Group to build a 250 bed hotel on the site. But this too could be wrong. According to the folk at Fitzrovia News residents have noticed construction activity on the site, so this morning I popped round to have a butchers. At first nothing too unusual, a cleared site.

To the south:

 To the north: 

 But hang on, take another look at the first picture, what's the grey box on the southern perimeter? Closer inspection revealed this:

Not so empty. Looks like a prefab bungalow. Fitzrovia News goes on to report that "there are rumours of a "pocket development" with a large amount of public open space. A parkland site with vegetable gardens, an orchard, an environmental education centre complete with horticultural workshop..." (wow, pretty detailed for a rumour, but it goes on) "...and zero-carbon affordable housing. The tallest building will be the Grade II* listed chapel at the heart of site". Even Lord Foster's in on the act saying that "open space, greenery, a place to relax, space for recreation, and somewhere to grow your own food is the future of our cities"

Of course such a small scale development won't make any money and won't house that many people either but you can grow your own food (you'll probably have to after shelling out for your bungalow) and it's all going to be just lovely...as one local puts it:

"Enormous excitement if this is true! Have people come to their senses at last. Now the developers need to talk to the Fitzrovia gardeners & others locals who have all sorts of marvelous ideas to add".

Remember that the developer is likely to be The Hard Rock Group. The group has a hotel in Vegas; this is what it looks like:

Lovely.

And here's another article in the Fitzrovia News written by Ms Lovely, I'm not making this up. 

Following on from Stacey over at The Focus Blog about the future developent pipeline in and around Vauxhall, (view her blog here) here's a picture showing the St George Tower. It's been under construction for a while now but most of that has been underground so far. With piling and foundation works now complete the core should rise quickly and become another landmark on the Thames.

Thanks to skyscrapernews for the picture.

This is what it will look like when complete, a whole 1 metre taller than the Gherkin!

You may have seen in the press over the past week or so Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London's claim that since being in the post of Mayor he has delivered close to 40,000 new affordable homes and is on his way to delivering his pledge of 50,000 new affordable homes by the end of his term. 

Well, now those figures are starting to appear with cracks in. Dave Hill, the Guardian columnist has done a good job at trying to analyse the figures to reveal the truer numbers. You can read his story here. I'll try and round up an abbreviation of his piece though starting off with the official press release.

Provisional figures show that, despite the toughest economic climate for decades, 38,840 new affordable homes have been delivered since Boris Johnson was elected. This means the Mayor remains on track to deliver his pledge of 50,000 more affordable homes by the end of March 2012, a record for a Mayoral term.

So... what does "delivered" mean within this context? It means units completed since May 2008 when Boris was Mayor.

Does that mean Boris has taken credit for units which started construction under Ken's leadership? Apparently not, some may have received permission under Ken but funding would have been directed under Boris.

Have any affordable homes been demolished to make way for any of the 38,840 new homes? Yes, how many? Who knows? 38,840 is the net figure though so they have been subtracted.

What does the term "provisional" exactly mean? Who knows, the mayor's office hasn't clarified this.

So where does the 38,840 figure come from? Apparently the HCA have figures of 13,070 and 13,570 for 2008/09 and 2009/10 respectively, making a total of 26,640 for Boris's first 2 years

So what about the missing 12,200 homes? This is the provisional bit.

The article ends by reminding us all that Boris would have got nowhere near the amount of homes built if it hadn't have been for the Labour government's provision of £5.5bn towards the HCA to kickstart stalled schemes. There's also the matter of his deadline to provide the 50,000 homes getting knocked back by 12 months from 3 years to 4 years.

With the austerity measures and cut backs now in place and with his own party leading the coalition government, Boris can think again if he'll be getting much help in terms of funding. The Red Brick blog has come with this rather depressing graph to illustrate the likely effect of all this on affordable housing provision in London over the coming years.

Planning consent was granted last night (subject to approval by the Mayor) for Ham Yard in Soho, just to the north of Shaftesbury Avenue. The site is going to accommodate 24 private flats and a 92 bedroom hotel.

Unusually there's very little in the way of planning gain for such a scheme, the affordable housing contribution that would be expected (over £2 million based on current policies) has been reduced to £431,000 and the contribution towards Crossrail (£166,738) has been waived.

Apparently there are covenants on the site that prevent the implementation of planning consents already granted, and despite attempts by the developer to negotiate with the other party they've not been able to reach an agreement.

According to the committee papers the covenant dates from 1981 and was between the owner of this site at that time and the owner of the adjacent Smith's Court. It limits not only the height of development adjacent to Smith's Court but on development almost all of the site, part of which has now been vacant and in a poor state for over 20 years. Hopefully this consent will see things progressing more swiftly from here on.

Union Developments' "ultra hi-spec" scheme in Bermondsey Spa has now been launched to the UK market.

The scheme is marketed as "Grange Gardens", and comprises two blocks: the "Cascade" of 37 private units and the "Courtyard" of 35 private units. Prior to the UK launch 22 of these units have been sold to overseas investors. The remaining 50 units have all been released to the market with six reserved so far.

Prices for one-beds range between £295,000 and £365,000, for two-beds between £365,000 and £570,000, and for three-beds between £455,000 and £895,000. These prices represent £ per sq ft figures between £508 and £783.

The site is located between and has frontages to Grange Walk (to the north) and Grange Yard (to the south).

The Guardian today runs with the story that finally the time has come and that demolition is to begin "within hours" at the Heygate Estate in Elephant and Castle. The first bit to go will be the 98 units on Rodney Road. This will then be followed by further demolition in the next few weeks before some of the larger blocks are brought down in May.

The entire estate, which is one of the largest in Europe, will be demolished in less than a year. Rob Deck, Lend Lease project director for Elephant and Castle, said: "The demolition of the Heygate estate is a major milestone in the scheme to rejuvenate Elephant and Castle." (Guardian)

Of the 3,000 people the estate used to house, 11 dwellings are still occupied, mainly by leaseholders who are still negotiating leaving terms with the council. The picture below shows a photo I took of the estate when visiting the Strata last year on an NLA tour. Many believe the estate was not worthy of complete demolition and regeneration. I say good riddance.

Look closely at the picture below. Specifically to the left of the Shard...see the circular shape? This is what I witnessed this morning on the way to work, a genuine UFO sighting:

...as I got closer I noticed markings on the side of the craft:

blimp.

Family Mosaic has won planning consent to build 64 residential flats in East Walworth on the corner of Old Kent Road and Glengall Road, close to Burgess Park. A similar scheme for 67 units was refused and dismissed at appeal last year.

Although the scheme was recommended for approval by the planning inspectorate, planning officer Yvonne Lewis said "the design falls some way short of being exemplary", and Cllr Robin Crookshank Hilton agreed, saying: "It looks like it's befitting of a Croydon civic centre." (EGi News)

Back in 2003, if anyone had asked us what the most super-prime development currently being marketed was, the answer would have been simple,The Phillimores. This Northacre/Westcity Holdings JV on Campden Hill Road in Kensington was so swanky that the brochure was made out of mahogany (I'm not joking) and the opportunity to purchase was almost by invite only. So getting pricing details for any of the 67 units was going to be almost impossible, we got the details on 6 of them, just enough for us to guestimate the overall £psf around £1,300 psf.

Ask us the same question today and we'd have to say One Hyde Park. Trouble is, specific pricing details are non existent. Nick & Christian say that 45 of the units have sold at an aggregate price of £963,511,720, but can we work out the £psf from this?

Luckily we don't have to, erstwhile Estates Gazette editor Peter Bill has done it for us on his Reality Check blog. 

Oh, it's around £5,000 psf by the way.

Now I wouldn't normally blog on a story regarding a project that's just received planning permission in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, what with this being a blog about residential development in London but then this story is a bit different.

The Kingdom Holding Company have apparently just won planning consent for a record-breaking tower to stand at 1,609m tall, there's no typos in there, that's right over a mile high. Remember the current tallest building the Burj Khalifa; that reaches a height of 828m and dwarfs any other man made structure on the planet, this will be nearly double the height again.

The building itself is said to provide 38 million square feet and will form the centre piece of a development on the outskirts of the city creating a 'city within a city'. Omrania & Associates with HOK have been selected to draw up the masterplan, comprising residential units, retail space, office blocks, a beach resort, hotels and an educational institution.

The new city will be designed to accommodate 80,000 residents with space to cater for up to the additional million tourists that are expected to visit the Kingdom Tower. A lift journey to the top of the 275-floor structure is estimated to take 12 minutes.

Quite amusingly an unofficial website celebrating the Burj Khalifa project in Dubai describes the proposals as "unrealistic", "impractical", and simply "unnecessarily tall", well they would do, many people felt the same way about that project, but you can't argue against all three points again.

Boris Johnson at the GLA along with Hammersmith and Fulham Council has today published their joint 'White City Opportunity Area Planning Framework'. View it here.

The Mayor in his 'London Plan', outlined what he called 'Opportunity Areas', a dozen or so places which could accommodate large regeneration programs. White City is one such place and one which has now been put out to public consultation.

In the outline framework there are plans to build as many as 5,000 homes and 1,260 student beds, as well as office, retail, hotel, leisure etc etc. My first thought is that's a lot. My second thought is where in White City could you accommodate this amount of development? I don't know the area incredibly well, but I do know there are not any huge swathes of derelict land knocking about.

So where is the site? Well it's here; the land directly to the north of Westfield shopping centre, to the west of West Cross Route, south of Westway and to the east of Wood Lane and the BBC television studios. Still 5,000 homes looks like it would be a push.

Here's a rough render of what's envisaged. For your bearings Shepherds Bush station is at the very bottom, in the middle of the picture with Westfield above it.

The 3 scenarios...

And what will become of the area in and around Westway...

I know we need more homes built in the capital but I'm not sure building towers almost on top of what is essentially a motorway is the right way of going about it.

 It will be interesting to see what comes out of the 'consultation' process.

Competition time again, where was this photo taken from?

Guide prices have been released for an up-and-coming canal-side development in Hackney. With prices ranging between £275,000 and £500,000, works are expected to commence soon on the flats.  

But it's the history of the existing site that is interesting. It may not look like much from the outside but The Crown and Manor Club  (pictured below) on Wiltshire Row in Hoxton N1 has provided a safe haven for boys and young men for over 100 years.The origins of the club go back to 1903, when The New North Road Boys' Club started life just round the corner from the Club. In 1926 the Llewellyn Smith brothers, Arthur (who was also born in 1903) and Harold, and a number of fellow Old Wykehamists established another boys' club in premises at the back of The Crown Inn, off Kingsland Road; this they called The Crown Club. By this time, The New North Road Club was operating as 'Hoxton Manor' from the premises in Wiltshire Row.

After the outbreak of war in 1939, the Hoxton Manor premises came on the market, and the Llewellyn Smiths were able to affect a reverse take-over. The two clubs merged, and moved to Wiltshire Row together, into what were then still relatively new purpose built club premises.

The site has now been sold to a housing developer who has called the scheme Hoxton Wharf. The development will provide 74 private flats together with ten affordable units. However, a condition was also put forward as part of the application that a completely new sports hall facility would also be built on a lower ground and ground floor. Good news for the club as it means it will be able to return to its original site. 

An application for full planning permission has been submitted to the City of Westminster by Berkeley Homes for the redevelopment the land occupied by Abell (left red outline) and Cleland House (right), John Islip Street. If full permission is gained the proposed development of over 250,000 sq ft would include 285 residential units incorporated within two 12 storey buildings. Further details of the application have not been released by the City of Westminster.

Planning consent was secured earlier this week for the redevelopment of an office block near Wembley Stadium. What's notable about it is the site already had planning consent for a residential scheme with over 90% private housing.

It seems that despite having to pay their tuition fees there are certainly some that think students are a worthwhile market to be pursuing, and offer a potentially better return than standard housing.

Voted the capital's most ugly building in a BBC poll this was the Brown and Root building in Colliers Wood yesterday:

A few stories now from the on going regeneration of Elephant and Castle. I'll start off with the shopping centre and news that it looks as though it will now be refurbished instead of demolished. When looking at the 46-year old building and Europe's first covered shopping mall, the only thing that springs to mind is to demolish it and start again. However Southwark Council leader Paul John on Wednesday at a council assembly meeting stated it was now hatching plans with St Modwen, the malls owner to "substantially reconfigure the centre", (EGi News). 

Plans will go out for public consultation in the summer and it will be interesting to see what kind of response they get. I'm sure most would rather see the back of the shopping centre and a new development in it's place, however a plus point is that the works will be brought forward to an earlier phase instead of leaving it to the very end, like previously planned.

The 360 London development on Newington Butts, developed by First Base, designed by Foster & Partners and mothballed for the last few years also looks set to start soon. Around 10 applications to sign off conditions were recently submitted to the council. Once all of these have been granted consent, (so far 5 out of 10 have) expect development to kick off in the not too distant future.

As well as that Southwark Council's own website runs a story that Oakmayne Plaza, will get underway in April, so that's now then, or very soon at least. A site visit will be in order.

The large mixed-use scheme will comprise residential units, offices, retail, restaurants, a cinema, a hotel and student digs around a market square. The developer has secured an interest from Sainsbury's to include a medium sized supermarket and is currently negotiating with cinema operators. The scheme will be completed in 2014 and will have 312 private residential units, 275 student rooms and 2,300 sqm retail.

Programme of works

March 2011 - hoardings; archaeology trial pits; tree works
April 2011 - works start on site
May to July 2011 - piling
September to February - excavation. Four to six vehicles per day leaving site with waste via Deacon Way through estate to Heygate Road then north to Elephant and Castle
2012 to 2014 - construction

Anyone who gets the train into London Bridge would probably have seen this view before, the Shard becoming ever more dominant over the London Bridge skyline.

Ever seen a floating office, no neither had we, until now that is.

The USS (Unique Sailing Ship) Enterprise is moored at Cadogan Pier in Chelsea and has around 3,000 sq ft of B1 space to let.

And here's a thought for those who live near the Thames, instead of going to the office the office could come to you. And then there are the Star Trek references of course.

If you want to shout "Kirk to Enterprise" all day long contact the good people at Cowan & Rutter.

Just come across this rather interesting scoping opinion submitted for the Surbiton Water Works on Portsmouth Road, Kingston. The application reads...

"Request for Environmental Impact Assessment Scoping Opinion for the redevelopment of site to provide a leisure marina for up to 90 berths, up to 70 floating homes, 15 residential moorings, restaurant of up to 850 sq m, up to 225 car parking spaces, heritage/ education centre and nature reserve."

The applicant is Cascina Ltd, who have commissioned Savills and PRC group as agent and architects respectively.  

Here's what the site looks like today, photos taken from google street view and bing.

....... in the form of floorplans that is.

Anderson Development's latest scheme in Hanwell offers an eceletic mix of apartment styles  named after famous historical luminaries. To name but a few, you can purchase an "Edison" - a 2 bed flat named after the inventor of the electric carbon filament lamp which later became the light bulb. Or indeed, you could plump for a one-bed unit called the "Tennyson" - named after the Victorian poet who wrote about major events such as The Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War. Of if your feeling brave you could opt for the creme da la creme - The "Victoria", a two-bed on the top floor offering more than 1,100 sq ft, aptly named after our dear old Queen Victoria who reigned between 1837 - 1901.

Prices for the first phase at Manor House Court range between £228,750 and £305,950

I've been visiting this site, (below) for a good few years now. It's been in this same state since 2005 when construction was halted, and every time I visit you can guarantee nothing will have happened.

If you get tomorrow's Estates Gazette then your find that it's up for sale with offers sought in the region of £800,000. The best bit though is that the site's described as 'Miami Beach Art Deco Style' and that's not even an April Fools joke!

The site on East India Dock Road, E14 has a part implemented planning permission for 6x1 bed residential units with some retail on the ground floor. £800,000 by 6 is £133,000 plus your development costs. Any takers?

The fact that this building has lain in the same state for nearly 7 years (half of those early years well within the boom years too) probably gives you your answer.