Good bye Deptford as we know it!
£1bn plan to turn Deptford into the 'Shoreditch of south London'
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/lond...uth-london-8600714.html?origin=internalSearch
Developers behind a £1 billion plan to regenerate Deptford today said they hoped to turn the run down riverside neighbourhood into a thriving “Shoreditch of south London.”
Ambitious proposals to build 3500 homes, as well as shops and restaurants, on the site of the former historic royal docks where Queen Elizabeth I knighted Sir Francis Drake are due to be submitted to Lewisham council planners within days.
The 40 acre Convoys Wharf wasteland opposite the gleaming towers of the Docklands financial district has lain derelict for 13 years with no public access to the waterfront.
The latest masterplan for drawn up by urban designers Sir Terry Farrell on behalf of developers Hutchison Whampoa would create three new parks and convert the sole surviving historic buildings - the Grade II Victorian Olympia warehouse - into a new cultural centre for south east London.
There would also be a 270 metre long jetty parallel to the riverbank used as an London’s first “island park” in the Thames that will be served by the Clipper riverboat service.
Sir Terry said: ”This will be a real transformational scheme, I can’t think of any other in London where there will be such a big transforming effect.”
Sir Terry told the Standard the remarkably rich history of Deptford - it is linked with figures such as Sir Walter Raleigh, Christoper Marlowe and Samuel Pepys - and its growing reputation as a “cultural hub” colonised by artisits gave it huge potential.
He said: ”You have got Goldsmiths nearby and there are lots creative people living here. I think this is the equivalent of Hoxton or a Shoreditch of the south.”
Many of the homes at Convoys Wharf will be in three high rise towers of up to 46 storeys with luxury apartments at the top.
Sir Terry said he thought the scheme would attract more “well off” Londoners to live in Deptford but “I don’t see this as an obvious location for selling off-plan overseas.”
The scheme, which will create 2000 new jobs, including 1000 in construction, has proved already controversial locally because of what has been described as it its “extraordinary denmsity” and because only 500 of the homes will be affordable.
Roo Angell, a member of the Deptford Is campaign group said: ”There doesn’t seem to be much balance, is 14 per cent affordable really enough to integrate it into the local area? It is surrounded by a lot of social housing and it could do with more employment space. It should not be just an island with its back turned to Deptford - these proposals do not really feel like part of London.”
But Sir Terry said: ”There are certain areas of London that really need affordable and others that need an influx of more market housing to support the area. This area has a huge amount of social housing, it’s a question of getting the mix right.”
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