There are secrets in The Library Building. As part of our campaign to launch the last remaining apartments in Clapham we invited the talented artist O.Two/Fade To Gloss into the building site and let him loose on the bare concrete walls. What happened next is quite something. The art will soon be covered over as the rest of the building works continue, hidden behind the walls of someone’s new apartment.
With our joint venture partners, Development Securities plc, we have recently acquired the 17-acre London Gate business park in Hayes, Middlesex. We will shortly announce plans for a radical £250m redevelopment of the site that pays homage to its important history. Many of the empty and semi-derelict buildings were designed to be the home EMI’s global manufacturing business by the famous British Art Deco architects Wallis, Gilbert and Partners who were responsible for the Hoover Building in Perivale, the Firestone Factory in Brentford and Victoria Coach Station.
We are partners with the London Borough of Bromley in a proposed £80m mixed-use PPP scheme to transform part of Bromley Town Centre. Our proposed Bromley South Central scheme is designed to kick start regeneration of the South end of Bromley High Street. At the heart of a proposed new residential and leisure quarter will sit a landscaped public square surrounded by a nine screen multiplex cinema, 25,000 sq ft of cafés and restaurants, a 150-bedroom business hotel, 173 private and affordable apartments and a new 400 space underground car park.
With our joint venture partners United House, we are building a landmark £80m mixed-use regeneration scheme which will transform leisure services across two sites in Clapham town centre, south west London. The Public Private Partnership scheme, will provide Clapham with a new, highly sustainable leisure centre, a new, state-of-the-art library, a new family medical centre and some of the most high quality residential accommodation in the borough including affordable housing in partnership with Notting Hill Housing Group. The PPP deal meant that in the teeth of the recession, we were able to secure £35m funding for this hugely important project (including loan funding from the Homes and Communities Agency’s kickstart programme), pre-sell £46m of the development and guarantee the London Borough of Lambeth a brand new library and leisure centre funded entirely from the sale of the private sector element of the development.
Earlier this year, as part of the Spirit of Sittingbourne consortium, we were selected by Swale Borough Council as their development partner to regenerate Sittingbourne town centre over the next five years. We’re going to build a new station square to transform arrival in the town. A new cultural quarter, civic quarter with a new library, brand new public realm throughout the town centre and residential schemes will generate £250m of economic improvement over the next ten years and will create 1100 jobs.
In April we were granted planning consent for The Movement, a vibrant, highly sustainable and truly mixed-use scheme located on the former Greenwich Industrial Estate, currently derelict, which is adjacent to Greenwich DLR and Mainline Station. With our partners Development Securities Plc we will deliver a new threshold for the soon-to-be-Royal borough at the main point of entry for visitors to the World Heritage Centre.
In summer 2008 we installed a 1960s commuter train carriage into a site next to Deptford High Street train station in south east London. We put it there to kickstart a £60m mixed-use PPP regeneration scheme in partnership with the London Borough of Lewisham. Following Network Rail's redevelopment of the station, we will begin a programme to transform that part of Deptford town centre with a new residential building by Richard Rogers, restoration of an historic Victorian carriage ramp and a new public square.
In March 2006 we were selected by Brighton and Hove City Council and The University of Brighton as the preferred developer for the redevelopment of the old Circus Street municipal fruit and vegetable market in Brighton. The £100m mixed-use, PPP regeneration scheme is currently in design. The scheme will be built around a new public piazza and a brand new library for the University on a site just off Grand Parade and right next to the University campus.
We acquired Eynsham Hall from Hanover International in April 2005, a conference and training centre developed around a beautiful Grade II listed Jacobean-style mansion in North Leigh, Oxfordshire.
In January 2005 we acquired Sundridge Park hotel and conference centre from Hanover International in a deal worth £15m. The impressive estate in Bromley boasted an historic 16-acre landscape which was originally designed by Humphry Repton in the 1790s, a 1970's purpose built conference centre, a Grade II listed Coach House, built in 1836, and a Grade I listed Mansion House at the heart of the estate, surrounded by 175 acres of championship standard golf courses.
