Out of sympathy and scale

Published: 30 June, 2011

• ON the current proposals to redevelop the Hawley Wharf site (It’s Camden Lock in 2014, June 23), the site is effectively a carcass with two vultures squabbling over it.

The developers want to overdevelop it while the local politicians take it as an opportunity for self-promotion.

The proposal for a massive building by the canal is totally out of sympathy and scale. 

It needs a much smaller and more sensitive approach in keeping with the scale of the canal and the railway. 

The development need not include housing – there isn’t room for it there – and Camden Town has masses of council housing and so many huge council estates already. 

The process for designing the new development is already going seriously wrong and this vulture squabble is going to produce disastrous results. 

What is needed are planning guidelines for the site development, but free of political influence or council funding considerations so that suitable buildings can be designed. 

Is that a tall order?

EAMON O’SULLIVAN 
Architect, 
Burghley Road, NW5

Overbearing

• HAVING visited the Hawley Wharf exhibition, I entirely agree with those who find the scheme far too massive and overbearing for the site.

Not only does it include a five-storey shopping centre (the “market” building), but an eight-storey block of flats, part of the proposed 220 new homes to be crammed into a ludicrously restricted space.

I was also disturbed to see the plan would involve the demolition of the row of dignified mid-Victorian villas along the south side of Hawley Road. Number 1, currently being refurbished, would be exempt as it’s listed, but all the rest would go. 

I asked about this and was told that the villas “didn’t fit in with the plan”.

Another very good reason, I’d say, for it to be rejected.

PHILIP KEMP
Jeffreys Street, NW1

All profit for developers

• PROPERTY developers see potential for gaining mega-profit from any area made popular by ordinary people, in this case Hawley Wharf (New Journal, June 23).

The very essence of what made a place attractive and interesting will be killed off by redevelopment.

Drawings show glass monoliths so beloved of developers. Cramming in masses of retail outlets and expensive flats will, of course, be good for them but the resulting property will be too dear for most, driving out the useful, the interesting, and poorer, people who have spent their lifetime in the area. A first submission of plans for a development larger than will feasibly be passed by a council is a favourite developers’ trick. They will go on scaling down submissions until one gets approval. Of course, leaders of councils love huge developments because they stand to gain so much by allowing them.  

Everywhere the views of Londoners are being swept aside – Battersea, Stratford, Cricklewood – to name but three development areas. Added to which are the great swathes of land which Crossrail is taking from London. (The few affordable homes in any development create yet another divisive group in our society, as many will be disappointed not to be chosen, the criteria never having been explained to the rest of the people.)

The number of jobs held to be created by redevelopment might or might not be a truth, but one can bet that any jobs created will be lower-paid ones in retail and service industries and, in any case, theoretical.  

In reality, there will be few retail and service jobs anywhere for some time to come. Jobs and homes lost because of redevelopment should also be taken into account but never are.

You also report (June 23) on the Middlesex Hospital site redevelopment. I see one of the consortium is the Icelandic bank Kaupthing. Have they paid back monies owing to our councils and pension institutions, then? Another is Aviva, troubled enough to be selling off their RAC arm. It just shows how much money is still available through private equity for borrowing by the development crowd. 

I forget what was originally paid for the publicly owned site.  Whatever it was did it just disappear?

JUNE GIBSON 
Chandos Way, NW11

Such tat

• WORKING on the [misquoted] tenet of “If you build it, they will come”, then I don’t doubt that the proposed Hawley Wharf development will be a success.

Conversely, if you don’t build it, they will still come!

Either way Camden, and its “world famous” markets, will still be the centre of the universe for tourists coming to gawp at silly hats, shoddy shoes, tattoo and bodily mutilation emporia, drug-use accoutrements and ethnic food stalls.

I have no opinion on the new development but, please, don’t insult anybody’s intelligence with twee rubbish such as the inclusion of a butcher, a baker and the like.

Whoever wrote this roses round the door claptrap may have begun to wax lyrical but they stopped short by not admitting that it’s more likely to be the candlesticks and candles (scented) makers and purveyors of such tat who predominate in any such development.

CHRIS DOBSON
South End Close, NW3