Inside Croydon: "Westfield and Hammerson: uninformative and unhelpful"

Link to web site

"CROYDON COMMENTARY: What do you call a public consultation exercise that offers no real, hard information? A Croydon [Hammerson] public consultation exercise.

"ARNO RABINOWITZ went along to the latest box-ticking exercise staged in the town centre by Westfield and Hammerson over the weekend, and found it a complete waste of time.

"... Four years on from when the redevelopment of the Whitgift Centre and Centrale were first suggested, and Westfield and Hammerson are apparently now expressing their keenness to get to work starting in 2017 – the year we were told originally that the whole thing would be completed. Judged on the evidence I saw last weekend, we are really none the wiser of what is about to be imposed upon our town centre.

"Woe is on the way, mark my words."

The Guardian: "Sadiq Khan warns 'greedy' developers as he outlines housing plan"

Link to web site

"The London mayor, Sadiq Khan, has outlined plans to quadruple the proportion of 'affordable' housing being built in the capital, warning he will target 'greedy developers wishing to get maximum bang for their buck'.

"Khan criticised his predecessor Boris Johnson for leaving 'the cupboard bare' and said just 13% of new homes in the planning pipeline are currently classed as affordable.

"At the start of his second week in office, the Labour mayor told the Guardian he wanted more than 50% of homes on some new housing developments to be affordable. He said that did not mean 80% of market rent, as affordable is defined by the government, but far lower social rents or 'London living rent', which is pitched at a third of average incomes."

Transport for London's response to election of Sadiq Khan

2016-05 Delivering the Mayors Manifesto by scribdstorage

Editorial material at London Reconnections

The Guardian: "Store closures and surge in online shopping threaten nearly half a million jobs, says report by British Retail Consortium"

Link to web site

"Nearly half a million shop workers, mostly female, are in danger of losing their jobs as a result of changes on the high street and the growth of online retailing.

The group, aged between 26 and 45, are identified as a “lost generation” in a survey conducted by the industry trade body the British Retail Consortium (BRC), published on Wednesday. The research suggests there is a gloomy outlook for the workers, many of whom are carers who need to work close to their family home, as they could find it hard to find alternative jobs.

"... Increasingly major retail chains are retreating from high street parades, opting instead to run fewer, larger stores that are a destination for shoppers, a trend that has contributed to the number of people employed in retail falling for the last seven years."

[Republished from March 2016] Further fallout from Barnet's corrupt 2010 Brent Cross consent ("to be fully funded by Hammerson etc."). The Thameslink station that could drag down Barnet Council

Barnet Times:

BBC: "Barnet polling station error: Council chief stands down"

"Andrew Travers,
who secured agreement for
the Brent Cross regeneration"

"The chief executive of Barnet Council has left his role after a blunder led to some voters being turned away from polling stations on Thursday.

Andrew Travers left the authority by 'mutual agreement' after the error, officials said.

Voters were initially turned away from all 155 polling stations in the borough because their names were missing from the poll list.

Allies & Morrison: " CRICKLEWOOD London"

"The Brent Cross masterplan presents a vision for a sustainable town centre. The key location of this brownfield site, which straddles the North Circular ring road, supports its potential as a major urban centre for northwest London, creating a gateway to the city from the M1.

"The mixed-use development provides business and residential expansion, recreation facilities and retail opportunities, underpinned by improved public transport connections. Sensitive to its context, the development creates clustered tall buildings as landmarks on the skyline, interspersed with smaller scale buildings and generous open spaces."

Team

Client
Multiplex Developments (UK) Ltd and Hammerson Standard Life
(Multiplex cleared off in 2010, when they saw the quagmire)
Structural Engineer
Evolve Consulting Engineers
Services Engineer
Scott Wilson Kirkpatrick
Quantity Surveyor
Davis Langdon
Development Manager
Bellhouse Joseph
(Bless!)
Contractor
Bovis Lend Lease
Landscape Architect
MacGregor Smith Ltd
Planning Consultant
GVA Grimley
Transport Consultant
Scott Wilson Kirkpatrick
Consultation Manager
Indigo

Hammerson - Westfield - Hammersfield: "Developers don’t know what to call their £1.4bn supermall"

"They want to spend £1,400,000,000 demolishing and rebuilding much of the town centre, to build 1,000 'luxury apartments', a car park for eager shoppers with 3,000 bays, and they are still promising 5,000 jobs (though they remain vague about exactly what kind of jobs these might be).

"... Because of the slightly involved nature of the partnership between shopping centre rivals Hammerson and Westfield, it has been confirmed that they won't be able to call it 'Westfield'. Which is something that could undermine the longer-term prospects of the gargantuan scheme.

"... The sketchiness of [east London-based architects practice, Spacehub's] work reflects the lack of firm detail about so much of the revised plans, despite Hammersfield having been working on this already for more than three years, going through one planning process and a Compulsory Purchase Order tribunal, and spending £300 million."

"There is to be a public exhibition to display the far-from-complete plans in the Whitgift Centre from May 12 to May 15, while the developers are expected in front of the planning committee again in June."

---

SPACEHUB:

"We are part of a team being given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform the public realm in a key part of Croydon, a project which is itself part of a wider strategy to address the town's public realm. Our proposals consist of a series of enhancements to a number of existing streets and the addition of a more permeable urban structure – focused around retail, leisure and residential uses.

"The design principles are based on the prioritisation of pedestrians and cyclists and a rationalisation of the existing public realm. Key elements include the humanising of Wellesley Road, a radical transformation of the pedestrianised North End and the sensitive enhancements to Poplar Walk and the historic environment of George Street. Our work also includes the creation of a large-scale amenity roof garden for the new residential community."

Evening Standard: Barnet, air pollution, and the Hammerson masterplan's 29,000 extra cars per day around Brent Cross

"... Hammerson's £1.4bn shopping mall could look too much like a, well, shopping mall"

"The deputy cabinet member for planning, said:

"A key aspect we have felt strongly about all the way through the development of the proposals was the [need for an] open, or partially enclosed roof [for] the 24-hour walkway running east to west through the site – a protected street if you like, rather than a [less desirable] shopping mall sense of space.

I am conscious of the Westfield development at Stratford for example, which is an open street with the shopping mall as part of it.

I am not very keen on the idea of a closed environment. Those other places work with a protected but open environment, so why can't we do it here?"

Evening Standard: "Brent Cross raid: Five arrested after smash-and-grab gang target shopping centre" (getaway hindered by unsustainable car-biased infrastructure)

Link to web site

"Five men have been arrested after a gang of 12 raiders armed with sledge hammers and pick axes targeted jewellery shops in the early hours of this morning.

"Scotland Yard said the smash-and-grab gang launched two raids on jewellers in Brent Cross Shopping Centre at about 2.30am.

"... Following the raids, the suspects fled the scene on foot and bicycles."