Property News · October 4, 2016

Earls Court regeneration: reviews and uncertainties


Sadiq Khan and others are looking at ways to make one of London’s most controversial redevelopment schemes work betterNine years after its ingredients first began to be combined, the future of one of London’s largest and most contested redevelopment schemes looks as clear as mud soup. The Earls Court Project, guided by architect Sir Terry Farrell’s 2010 masterplan, foresaw the closure and destruction of the Earls Court exhibition centre, the relocation of London Underground’s Lillie Bridge maintenance depot and the demolition of 760 homes on two council estates. In their place, and also covering the nearby exhibition centre car park, would rise clusters of mostly very expensive flats together with a new high street to help form and connect four “villages”. Today, some of the masterplan has been partly put into effect but much of it is mired in uncertainty.During the mayoral election campaign, Sadiq Khan disparaged the project for the low number of additional “affordable” homes it proposed. Of the 7,500 that principal developer Capital and Counties (Capco) has permission to build, 760 would be replacements for those knocked down on the two estates and only 740 of the remaining 6,740 would be “affordable”, all of them of the “intermediate” variety aimed at middle income households. That represents a net “affordable” gain of just 11% of the new housing across the entire project area in a major transformation that’s also been opposed on economic, cultural, architectural and environmental grounds. Continue reading…

Source : theguardian.com
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