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Developers must start listening
• PROPERTY Week magazine has reported on an award given to the Regent Quarter development at King’s Cross by the Islington Society.
Although it mentions that the scheme was initially condemned by campaigners, it does not mention that Islington Council’s planning committee told developer P & O to think again about its plans and that it was this radically altered proposal, produced after consideration of what objectors had to say, which won the award.
Long-standing property developer Ian Lerner was to the forefront in successfully promoting a different approach. He has spoken about this in an interview with Angela Inglis and myself, which can be heard on the internet-based community radio station ccradio.org
In the interview, Mr Lerner analyses the direction that the Canary Wharf development took and applies his knowledge of the market to the proposals for King’s Cross. His view of the King’s Cross development is that, as it is currently constituted, it is likely to bankrupt the developer and to return sections of King’s Cross to the unpleasant back-street activities that they have been leaving behind.
His prescription for the King’s Cross development is to have more residential accommodation that is less reliant on offices, to have a more mixed economy and definitely not to put housing, especially social housing, on the Triangle site without looking much more carefully at how transport is to serve the York Way area.
The developer needs to acknowledge that it is the passion for the right development that motivates objectors rather than opposition to development as such.
While one can appreciate the impatience of developers who want to get on with the work, when the advice is coming from someone with 40 years’ experience of property development perhaps they and the councils involved should think again.
MARIAN LARRAGY
Royal College Street, NW1
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