Kate Hoey: ‘You will now understand why the local community have been so clear that they did not trust TFL or Lambeth over the Vauxhall bus station plans. The community are usually proved right’
Graeme Craig, TfL’s commercial development director, tells Property Week that his eye is on ‘development opportunities’ that include Vauxhall Bus Station, Kidbrooke Railway Station and Morden town centre.
In TfL’s book, one reason Vauxhall Bus Station has to go or be radically trimmed is to make way for shops. But The Vauxhall Society in the past has drawn attention to loose talk from a TFL employee about plans for a TfL skyscraper HQ on the bus station site.
If true, that would release for development another TfL site or sites in central London, or make TfL a big office landlord. The TfL announcement has prompted one man, Harvey Pettit, to investigate ‘rumours that TfL plans to build an HQ at the [Vauxhall] bridgefoot’.
Mr Pettit says that after looking closely at TfL drawings at a KOVF public meeting in December it became clear to him ‘that the reason for truncating the bus station was to release a tract of land at the bridgefoot’.
Mr Pettit backs up his contention with a TfL drawing of an oval space at the bridgefoot, adding ‘Curiously, the key does not indicate what this oval is meant to be!’.
