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Has credit crunch killed towers threat to skyline?
• WHAT a good feeling it is that at last we will have proper access around our City Road Basin and a wonderful new public open space, the piazza, at the City Road end of the basin that has been closed off for decades. We would like to celebrate the new piazza as Islington has a dearth of open space.
It is all the better that the public space and the basin do not have huge glass and concrete towers looming over them, threatening the enjoyment of the space and overshadowing the pleasure that the amenity will give to the community for years to come.
The Tribune front-page article was quite right to throw doubt on the twin towers ever being built (Basin towers hit by credit crunch fears, October 3).
There was a strong campaign against the towers as they were not welcomed in Islington, and it should be remembered that we were unfairly bulldozed into accepting the two mega-towers at the end of the basin. We were told they needed to be overlarge to provide the cash for opening up the basin to the public.
We were definitely conned as the public access and space have been provided without the towers, and it turns out that we could have had the basin surrounds opened up and a new piazza constructed many years ago.
One of the main culprits was British Waterways (BW), which promoted the planned dereliction of the basin and surrounds in order to create the opportunity for its property development master plan. BW led the drive for the two monstrous towers with density levels over four times the maximum recommended. British Waterways is the steward of our waterways and the navigation authority, and it is perverse that it instead operates as property developer of the lowest kind, and to the detriment of the Regent’s Canal and our basin.
In last week’s Tribune, the BW spokesman referred to British Waterways being a “development consortium”. It is nothing of the sort. He went on to say that BW “remain committed to this project” of the towers. BW should ask us, the public it serves, whether it should be pursuing a development that will have such a negative impact on our waterways, and be “an unsightly blot on the landscape”.
I say “our” waterways as it should be remembered we own the canals and inland waterways (they are a public asset), and BW’s role is to manage them on our behalf. British Waterways seems to be a long way off-track on that one.
Also note that, as British Waterways owns the freehold of the basin and a large area around it which used to be wharves and warehouses, it means the walkway around the basin and the piazza are basically on public land. Open space and “access to all” seems most appropriate – and there should be more of it.
Nor is Islington Council blameless for the threat of the two towers (the borough was in the stranglehold of the previous Steve Hitchins regime at the time), but at least Islington came good when it secured for us the £2.4million required for the piazza and open space with a grant from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. The reason the borough went for this grant is because it realised the tower developments were not going to happen, and that the developers which should have come up with the cash to provide the open space would let us down.
The developers, which include British Waterways, could not find enough finance to proceed with the construction of the towers three years ago, and they certainly cannot proceed now as they rely heavily on borrowing the money, which they will not get.
So, can we breathe a sigh of relief that Islington’s characteristic low-level skyline is now safe from the ravages of the two incongruous towers larger than Centre Point, and one of them about 15 storeys larger?
It is appropriate that the Mayor of London has just issued a consultation document on Open Space Strategies. Let’s hope the outcome of this, and of Islington’s reappraisal of the value of the open space of City Road Basin, will be that future building development at that location should be of modest scale and for the benefit of the community, rather than satiating the greed of property developers and misdirected stewards of our waterways. Go for it, Islington.
Del Brenner
Regents Network and a member of London Waterways Commission |
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