July 2011 Archives

...for less than the average semi.

Details here

Dutch architects Import.export want to take this urban camping thing to a whole new level:

Temporary camping pods to provide an "urban visitor sleeping solution" . More on their plans here.

Hackney Council last week approved outline planning consent towards themselves as the applicant for a major estate regeneration program. The estate in question is the Colville estate in N1, almost abutting both Shoreditch Park and the Regents canal, on the edge of Hoxton and De Beauvoir Town.

The consent is for the demolition of the existing buildings comprising of 412 dwellings and the development of a residential led mixed use scheme of replacement buildings comprising of 884 residential units in total. The split is as follows; 476 private, 297 social rented and 111 shared ownership.

Interestingly and in stark contrast to the 173 purely private units at the Kings Reach Tower (previously blogged), the entire development will be 'tenure-blind', meaning it will be impossible to tell which units are social and which are private. Whether developers will be keen to take this obligation on when Hackney Council put the scheme out to tenure, only time will tell, but it's encouraging to see Hackney's attempt at reducing polarisation within their borough. Tenure-blind schemes are becoming increasingly popular and that can only be a good thing.

Below is an image taken from the design and access statement, giving an indication of what the development encompasses.

And here is it today.

...all you need is a tent and a big building with a flat roof and they don't come much better than One New Change right next to St Paul's in the City:

Thanks to the Evening Standard for the picture they have the full story here.

One New Change is one of my favourite buildings in the capital because no matter how many times I visit it I still don't really know what it looks like, this is stealth architecture, massive yet unobtrusive. Designed by Sidell Gibson for Land Sec it took about three years to go from this:

To this:

The G15, the group of London's largest housing associations has secured between them £350m of government grant funding. Along with more than £2bn of private finance combined it will deliver over 13,000 affordable new homes in the next 4 years. The G15's recent press release can be viewed here. 

Over the next 4 years around 6 in 10 of the new affordable homes in the capital will be built by a member of the G15 associations. However this figure jumps to 90% when looking at affordable homes built nationally by housing associations.

In short, housing associations will play a vital role in delivering new homes across London in the coming years as the housing shortage becomes more and more acute. To say they don't already play a vital role would also be a huge understatement as they currently house around 10% of Londoners and manage around 410,000 properties.

Incidentally the G15 group of London housing associations include: 

This blog has written many times before on temporary uses. There was the golf driving range at Norton Folgate, the dinosaur exhibition at Land Sec's Park House and also the allotments at Noho Square which unfortunately never saw through to fruition.

In what is an excellent use of space in the heart of the City, 100 Union Street, SE1 instead of lying derelict as it has done since 2007 is now an 'urban physic garden'. A pop-up community built garden celebrating medicinal plants, also hosting an on-site cafe and a summer festival of events (talks, workshops, film screenings and the like).

The developer Lake Estates, whom have planning permission to build out 86 residential units as well as office and retail space within a 19 storey building stated "there's an opportunity for temporary projects to take place while development progresses slowly and endlessly through rounds of 'consent', 'approvals' and 'funding' before it can become reality. We encourage and enjoy the opportunity to see fast and free installations that bring sites to life." Good on them, if only more developers would be that facilitating in giving over space to local communities.

Check out the Urban Physic Garden site here, the press release gives a good overview of the project too. The only shame is that this project really is 'temporary', running for just two months it's open until 15th August. Will Lake Estates kick on with development in the Autumn? We'll just have to wait and see.

Thanks and copyright to the photos go to Mike Massaro. The full set of photos can be viewed here.

I was reading in the Times on Friday that this rather interesting 590 sq ft. 1 bed has an asking price of £700,000 on Cheval Place in SW7.

This "compact" one-bed that is in need of a refurbishment seems ludicrously expensive for what it is. However, as this house has a garage in an area where spaces can be sold for up to £350,000, it does start to make sense.

When looking at the floor plans, I've worked out that this garage is worth only £151,864.41. Bargain...

A perfect place to store your car and the have your driver at your beck and call when frolicking around SW1. This is probably why there were over 60 viewings last week. Maybe a perfect place for Parker to store FAB...

The Kings Reach Tower on the Southbank, close to Blackfriars Road this week received planning consent for a major extension and refurbishment and with it 173 purely private residential units. The 30 storey tower will also be extended to become 36 storeys in height offering swanky apartments to those able to afford them. The building incidentally was a casualty of the recession, being owned by Simon Halabi, who was declared bankrupt back in 2010. The CIT Group along with Jadwa Investment, a company owned by the Saudi royal family, then purchased the site for £60m, scraping the previous plans for an office refurbishment and instead going for this residential one, we see now.

35,000sqm of office space will still be provided, only a drop of around 3,000sqm on what is already provided even with floors 11 to 30 being converted to residential use. Much of the lower ground area is to be extended as well as infill space developed so that office use is still very much present.

Back on the residential front, the scheme will be entirely private, with no affordable housing being provided, not even off-site. Instead the developer has offered £22,435,000 towards the council's affordable housing fund, equal to £127,689 per flat. Many would see this though as the developer 'buying' the permission through its S106 contribution, after all they won't have any trouble selling the flats in this location, especially when you see how well NEO Bankside have done, just along the river.

According to EGi News, work is expected to begin early next year.  

Why walk around your house when you can skateboard, even on the walls:

Can't wait for the motorbike version. Full story here.

Would you live in a house with no running water and no electricity and stay there for three years?

Your first answer is going to be no, but if you knew that at the end of it you'd own that house, what would your answer be then?

Kenneth Robinson has already made that decision and he's got about 2 years 11 months to go. khou.com has the story. 

Normally the following statement wouldn't be of huge interest to The Pint of Milk Test:

"Notification of 56 days prior written notice of intention of Commencement of Development pursuant to clause 14.1 of the Legal Agreement dated 4th March 2011".

But in this instance it is; for two reasons. Firstly it concerns this site:

St James' Riverlight development on the site of the old Tideway Industrial Estate next to Battersea power station. It's part of the Nine Elms regeneration area which we blogged about here and here.

Secondly it tells us that works will start on site on Monday 5th September 2011, and we'll probably be there.

One of the more interesting records I site visit, is the permanent hotel vessel with planning permission in Canary Wharf. Granted back in 2008 for 180 hotel beds, along with conference facilities and the like, the large purpose built vessel has yet to appear. This is what it will look like though when it does, from developer Aquiva Developments.

So to my surprise when visiting E14 last week, I came across this, for which a split second I thought was the hotel. It obviously wasn't though with the large Deutschland lettering on its hull.

So what was it and what was it doing there? Well apparently it's a luxury cruise liner named MS Deutschland and is the largest ship ever known to have visited London Docklands. British Waterways has signed a deal to allow the cruise liner to berth in London Docklands during summer 2012, when it will play host to the German Olympic Committee. The purpose of this 36-hour visit was simply as a trial run ahead of next summer. The liner will be joined by a selection of some of the world's most exclusive super yachts, along with tall ships and smaller leisure vessels. More on the story can be found here.

Incidentally the sizes of both ships are near identical so MS Deutschland gives a great indication of the impact the permanent hotel will make when it does arrive.

In terms of big new applications at the moment, Wandsworth is where it's at. Over the next 20 or so years the Vauxhall Nine Elms & Battersea Opportunity (VNEB) area is going to change drastically, whish is good if you're REO (owner of the power station). The many tried and failed attempts to regenerate the huge power station site over the years is basically due to its isolation, the reason why so many are confident it could actually happen this time is because of everything around is kicking off, (including a big thanks to the US embassy).

At the Pint of Milk test we recently commented on Ballymore's plans for 2,000 units around the US embassy, looking to kick off soon, Tideways Wharf, another 750 units, now at permission as well as the gas holders site.

Now another one has come in for planning, just outline at this stage, but it's big. It's the South London Mail Centre, (aka Royal Mail's huge depo) on Nine Elms Lane. Due to it being outline and not a full permission I can't provide you with too many colourful pictures, namely because it hasn't been fully designed yet. There are some though which show an indication of what it will be like...

Here are the numbers...

7 building plots, maximum height of 23 storeys.

Overall floor space of 222,120sqm.

Between 1,332 and 1,870 residential units.

9,060sqm of retail (use classes A1 to A5, D1 and D2).

16,299sqm of business (storage & distribution) floor space (B8).

A new 'linear park'.

This image below shows the proposal, including the adjacent US embassy, Ballymore's Embassy Quarter and Tideways Wharf.

I know we live in a very image-conscious world, but I never thought that the property construction market would be affected. More and more construction sites are appearing with fake frontages whilst construction is taking place. This does make me laugh as I always thought that building sites were the epitome of rugged manliness and now several sites across London have erected these frontages to make it look prettier?!

Here's a perfect example with the aptly named Lipstick development in E14:

Another from above the Duke of Clarence on Borough Road in SE1:

After reading a story from EGi this morning, I notice that Burnley Wood in Lancashire have the same idea as North Harrow High Street. To make this "junkie haven" more appealing to potential buyers, they are painting the windows with pictures of curtains and flowers!

So if I understand this correctly, to improve Burnley Wood and hopefully increase the value of these properties (as one sold for £10,000 last month), the council decided to paint the windows rather than sort out the drug problem?  You can't argue that they're thinking outside of the box when every council is watching their purse-strings. Let's hope it works...

Minerva has submitted a new scoping opinion for their Ram Brewery site in Wandsworth. You might remember their previous plans being granted by Wandsworth, and then subsequently refused at a public inquiry by the Secretary of State. They were controversial for the two large towers in the north of the site, and their impact on the surrounding area, which resulted in the refusal.

However Minerva stated on EGi News, that "The Secretary of State has given a positive response to many aspects of the scheme and given guidance as to what is likely to be acceptable. We will now consider the information and guidance in the Secretary of State's response and review our options as we look to move the scheme forward."

So with that then, let's look at the new indicative plans...

Still a tall tower on site, although just the one this time instead of two. However, the overall number of units has come down. Previous plans were to provide 829 residential units; this new proposal is for 558, quite a substantial drop. They need to stick them somewhere for the development to work and it looks as though they believe a tower is the only option, otherwise the whole site would need to become much denser, which would then in turn ruin much of its character.

Here's the old and new proposal comparatively.

More on Minerva's proposals from themselves can be found here, (with the chance to give them feedback) and the actual scoping opinion through Wandsworth Council, is here.

Tesco's Streatham Hub development seems to have been dragging on for years now, that's probably because it has. Construction finally kicking off though has come a little closer with the news that Spenhill Regeneration, the property arm of Tescos has dished out the construction contract. That contract has gone to Vinci Construction, with a value of around £80m. For that they will build out 250 new homes, a 63,000 sq ft Tesco store as well as a new leisure centre to include an ice rink, swimming pool, sports hall and fitness suite. A new bus interchange and public realm improvements will also be provided.

GL Hearn are consulting Tescos, thanks go to them for the image above.

Clifton Mansions, in the heart of Brixton, consists of 22 flats grouped around a central courtyard and built in 1896 for workers from the Brixton Theatre. Functioning as a hub for creative's it didn't lose its cultural connections, with 2004 Turner Prize winner, Jeremy Deller, a past resident of the building. The gallery that represented him, The Cabinet Gallery, was situated here, with the works contained within it being bought out by the Saachi brothers in 1993. Members of 80s chart topping band The Pogues resided here as did the Cult and the Mekons.

However, since the mid 1990's the building has been maintained by squatters, who have been their ever since. Not for much longer though. Lambeth Council along with the police, plan to block off Coldharbour Lane, while the residents are thrown out of the property, from 8am tomorrow morning (Tuesday 12th July).

The Local press seem to be sympathising with the squatters, going along with the view  that after the evictions, Lambeth Council will pay Camelot, a private company, to provide "live-in guardians" to occupy the building, whilst the current squatters have done it for free all these years. The Council will then hand over the building to property developers for what they call the 'inevitable' luxury private flats - priced way out of reach of the local community.

However, you could also argue the view that it's about time these people got moved on and started conforming to 'the system'. After all they maybe able to afford it, after not paying any rent or tax for the past 15 years or so, or maybe not... 

 Incidentally, there were plans by the Clifton Mansions Initiative (CMI), back in 2007 to develop 22 affordable live/work units for use by the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs). These were to be aimed at intermediate market start up businesses unable to initially afford separate home and workspace, which would then create a creative business cluster. Whether these plans are still in place, I'm not sure, only time will tell. However Lambeth Council will soon show their intent by whom they sell the building on to, and under what terms.

Last year I mentioned the promising developments down at the Ocean Estate, in Stepney Green, when demolition had started on a couple of sites within the vast estate. It's really been a regeneration failure story over the years, being one of the most deprived areas in the country and infamously, once the cheapest place to buy heroin in Europe.

Tony Blair then notably visited it, back in 2001 on his campaign trail and promised £56 million towards its regeneration, as part of the Labour governments 'New Commitment to Neighbourhood Renewal' initiative. The then Prime Minister stated the "totally new approach to public investment" was designed to ensure that "no one should be seriously disadvantaged by where they live" within 10 to 20 years. A rather optimistically bold statement that one don't you think?...

Unsurprisingly the project stalled with builders withdrawing their bids due to a missing £200 million within the development costs, which was no where to be seen. So when planning permission was finally granted last year, the sceptics would have probably thought it could be another decade until anything actually happened. Well the sceptical would have been wrong. This was the site last week, on my site visits.

462 homes are currently under construction on the above site, with the whole of it now completely demolished, and much of it (as above) well under way.

Then there's this site (below), currently being demolished which will when complete provide a further 240 residential units. 

In total, when complete the Ocean Estate will provide 819 new residential units for private, social and shared ownership tenures, as well as the refurbishment of a further 1,200 council homes, and sooner rather than later too. Bellway and East Homes are the joint developers.

Allsop have recently announced that six private apartments from the development the Ironworks in Bow, E3 are going under the hammer on the 14^th July with guide prices between £200,000 and £400,000. With views of the Olympic stadium and rental values expecting to hit up to £5,000 per week during the Games, it sounds like quite a nice investment. Here's a picture from when we were tracking the development back in 2005:

After looking at our archive, I noticed that these units originally sold for between £200,000 and £275,000 in the summer of 2005. Considering that was six years ago and the guide price for these six apartments is still £200,000, it became quite apparent that these apartments have barely increased in value if at all.

Also, as the Games is a one-off event, surely it would be better to spend more on a one-bed apartment in Wimbledon and be able to charge £1,000 per week rent for the annual tournament?

Another way to look at it is you could take the money and spend it on the "Prestige" tickets for the Games. For a mere £270,000, you can take your 10 closest buddies to both the opening and closing ceremonies, four events and all the food and drink you can consume with the best seats in the house. I think a much better investment...

If you ever go through Aldgate and more specifically Aldgate East and it's junction with Whitechapel Road and Commercial Road, you will know how for the past couple of years, it's been synonymous with halted schemes and large vacant plots. This blog has written many times on the tribulations of the Aldgate East Station site, still halted since 2008, due to the collapse of Icelandic bank Landisbanki.

Opposite this site are two large plots which have been demolished and now lie vacant, still waiting for development to kick off. Here's what it looks like at the moment, (see Aldgate East station site in the background).

Above is the Aldgate Tower site (37,000sqm of B1 office across 16 floors) and below is the Aldgate Place site (93,000sqm of B1 office space across 21 floors.

Well, Aldgate is set to become an even bigger 'hole in the ground'. The Goodman's Field site, around 150m to the south of these sites is currently being demolished. Being developed by Berkeley, around 800 homes and 300 hotel rooms in towers up to 23 storeys will replace 50,000sqm of office space. The demolition will take a while considering  the size of the site but they are well on their way...

And another site worth mentioning, in between City Quarter (above) and the Aldgate East sites, is this one; 61-75 Alie Street, also currently in the process of being demolished. Barratt are developing this site which will provide 235 units in a 28 storey tower.

Let's hope that Berkeley and Barratt can start construction, soon after demolition works have completed, rather than sit on their permissions, until the market improves, like the office developments have over the road. Huge swathes of vacant land, boarded up, in the centre of the city do not look good.

Encouragingly however, Berkeley already have a sales office on site. You can tell a lot by a development by its marketing suite, we've commented on a couple before at Baltimore Wharf and NEO Bankside. Well here is Berkeley's Goodman's Fields... not a sales office... but a 'consultation centre'... nice.

...Brighton Pier this time:

A third of a mile long and for sale through GVA, contact Ben Allen on 020 7911 2360.

There are a number of iconic buildings in the capital, St Pauls, Houses of Parliament, Big Ben etc, you know the kind of buildings that are known world wide, even by people who've never been to London. But it never occurred to me that you could buy some of them. Below is Admiralty Arch, gateway to the Mall:

Ian Watmore, head of the government's Efficiency & Reform Group said "we might actually be able to get something for it" when he spoke at the public Accounts Committee last week. Nothing concrete has been stated as yet, but expectations that it will be offered to the market are high. But why stop there, just at the end of the Mall there's another quite desirable piece of real estate:

Only last month the Pint of Milk test blogged about 'the major plans for Lewisham', where there are many large developments planned across mostly the north of the borough and close to the River frontage. Even EGi News ran a story recently about 'the fate of nearly 70 acres in the planner's hands'.

Well here's another to add to the mix of large residential developments in Lewisham; the Cannon Wharf Business Centre. Having recently been granted consent by Lewisham, subject to approval by the Mayor, the scheme will provide buildings 3 to 8 storeys plus two buildings of 20 and 23 storeys in height. These will provide 696 residential units in total, with 579 private, 22 social rented and 95 shared ownership. The scheme is being developed by London Business Centres; RMA Architects and CGMS Planning Consultants were also involved.

The site is situated to the east of Evelyn Street, and to the south of Greenland Dock and Surrey Quays. The river frontage is a short distance to the east as is Millwall FC to the west.

The developers behind Elizabeth House on York Road, Waterloo have released plans for this strategic site in SE1, close to the South Bank. The Elizabeth House Limited Partnership (EHLP), a joint venture between Chelsfield Partners and London and Regional Properties will provide 136 residential units across the top 7 floors as well as 100,000sqm of offices. This comes after the previous controversial plans, dubbed the three ugly sisters were refused at a public enquiry. English Heritage and Westminster council claimed that the plans would have an unacceptable effect on views of Parliament Square, which Communities secretary John Denham agreed with. These are the old plans by P&O, which were thrown out.

and this is what David Chipperfield architects have now come up with.

If I'm being honest I probably prefer the previous plans, however the new scheme does have some good points. Firstly, it's mixed use, including a substantial amount of residential space.

Another is public realm, which looks to be far superior, including new piazzas and a greatly improved link between Waterloo Station, Jubilee Gardens and the River frontage.

This link has a great deal of information on the new scheme, showing the gradual 'dumbing down', within the design evolution. Still, it will be a great improvement on the buildings that currently preside on this site. 

Yesterday afternoon I went to the Middlesex Hospital to see Exemplar's new plans for the site, here are the details:

307 residential units in total (250 private and 57 affordable) 46 units more than the current consent.

320,000 sq ft gross B1 space.

20,000 sq ft gross retail.

28,500 sq ft open space.

Here are the pictures:

Density and massing:

View from above:

Site plan (consented scheme):

The site, looking north:

The site, looking westward (the building is the Chapel which is to be retained):