The Battersea Studios office complex may be growing again

Posted on October 5, 2020 by David

We keep an eye on local office and business space developments (see our previous article on the subject here) – because being able to access reasonably local jobs and employment matter more than ever now, and because the office space we do have is under constant pressure from conversion to housing! Which is why it’s good to see that the owners of the Battersea Studios are exploring whether they can add build a new building, to add space to the existing development.

A bit of context – the Battersea Studios premises have a long and complicated history. It was originally built in the 1970’s as a warehouse for BT – but then turned into the ‘Middle East Broadcasting Centre‘, a film studio that transmitted a free-to-air satellite service to a huge audience across the Middle East and further afield. A company called Helical Bar bought it in 2005 for £8 million (in the face of stiff competition from broadcaster Al Jazeera who also wanted a ready-made London studio), and converted the studios to 56,000 square feet of small workspaces (though kept several small TV studios). The property was a success and they had no trouble at all in attracting tenants – so they built a second building with another 50,000 square feet of office space, before selling the whole property in 2005 for £35 million to the Schroder UK Property Fund.

At the time they sold it, the whole complex generated £1.47 million of rent a year. At an average of £21.50 a square foot this is good quality office space at affordable rates. To put this number in context – more high-profile locations like Victoria can run at £75 for high end space and £60 for more rudimentary offices, and even far-flung spots like Stratford run at £30-45 – so it’s not surprising it is popular! It’s especially targeted at more creative businesses (who don’t mind being next to the railway and one of London’s largest concrete batching plants).

The new proposals are at a very early stage – essentially the owners have approached Wandsworth planners for an early steer (a ‘scoping opinion’) on whether they can reasonably hope to build a new ten storey building – with light industrial uses on the ground floor, and offices above. Broadly adding more of the same, given they have not had any real difficulty letting the space they have.

Despite being a tall building proposal, the nature of what is being built and more importantly where it is being built mean this doesn’t seem an especially controversial idea – it won’t overshadow anyone, and it is buried quite deep in the industrial estate, fairly far from any roads or houses. It would go on a back yard corner that houses a small raised platform with satellite dishes on it (serving the studios in the building). The site is already a designated industrial area in both the Borough strategy and local plan & the London planning frameworks – housing a major concrete batching plant (our photo below).

With office space near where people live still in high demand (despite the near term impacts of the Coronavirus) and the spaces we do have locally always under threat of conversion to flats, going upwards is one of the only ways Wandsworth can provide the space needed to house jobs and employment – and we suspect that if this does proceed to a planning application, despite being twice the height of its immediate neighbours, it will see some support.

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Baguette Deli: A new French cafe on Lavender Hill

Posted on September 22, 2020 by David

London is full of little nationality clusters, and the eastern end of Lavender Hill is very much a French one! It’s been helped by the Wix French and bilingual school (a pioneering initiative that’s been running for over a decade), a pair of French / bilingual nurseries, a bilingual English/French stream at the Shaftesbury Park school, and of course ready access to the Lycee in South Kensington…

What was of course missing was a French cafe – which is why we’re pleased to see newly opened French cafe, the Baguette Deli on Lavender Hill. They specialise in fresh baguette sandwiches made to order in the kitchen at the back, and as you would expect they also offer Croques of all descriptions (Monsieur, madame, nordique, mushroom rarebit, quatre fromages), as well as fresh pressed juices and the usual range of coffees.

There are a few tables inside and out (helped by the pavement here being very wide), all well spaced out – and a small assortment of French treats for sale. All well presented and the owner (who has lived in the neighbourhood for many years) are cheerful and clearly very enthusiastic about this new venture. A welcome new arrival to Lavender Hill and the Baguette Deli looks set to do well.

This is the latest in a string of cafe openings on this part of Lavender Hill – and follows the launch of now-very-successful cafe & bakery SweetSmile, who are now also running a hot food menu and are licensed; 2Love who opened their popular second local branch on the end of the street nearer Clapham Junction, Il Molino, who continue to do a brisk trade in coffees, cakes and salads and deli food, and Sendero, one of the first cafes we ever wrote about who have done so well they have also opened a second local branch – in addition to a well established branch of Caffe Nero and of course Maiolica Cafe on Wandsworth Road who despite now focussing primarily on food, still make a good coffee!

Posted in Business, Food & drink, Retail | 3 Comments

Stormont Road: Car crashes in to the DayLewis pharmacy…

Posted on September 21, 2020 by David

Not a good day for someone here – this car crashed in to another parked car at speed, and then slammed in to the wall of the DayLewis pharmacy at the junction of Stormont Road and Lavender Hill. It’s not too clear how they managed to crash backwards at sufficient speed to demolish part of the building… We understand no-one was injured – but the building’s looking to be in quite some trouble, with severe structural damage and a lot of bricks on the move. The car has awkwardly also hit not one but two gas meters (the bent-looking white pipe on the wall). It’s not looking great for the Stormont Road street sign which has been squashed; the other parked car which was also hit has lost its bumper.

Our firefighters were swiftly on hand to disconnect the power & gas and check the building was safe(ish).

The bit of the building that has been destroyed isn’t actually part of the pharmacy, but rather a small one-room office with its own access to the street that is let separately – so with some quick propping up it’s likely the pharmacy could be open again pretty quickly.

Speaking of which – Wandsworth Council have been in touch to let us know that the long-abandoned (and completely destroyed – it’s had quite some accident) back BMW that has been in the car park of the Stormont Road estate for over a year will finally be removed unless it is claimed by its owner. We suspect residents will appreciate having the parking space back, and wherever its owners are, we doubt they want it back…

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Controversial plans to remove and pave over *all* the plants and greenery around Asda at Clapham Junction

Posted on September 17, 2020 by David

Monday update: Strong responses and a lot of concerns raised on this one – a lot of you have got in touch, and we see a lot of comments have also gone to Wandsworth on the planning application in the last couple of days since we posted this (it had no comments at all but at the time of writing has 48 objections, and two general comments which look like objections). Fair comments also raised that the current area has issues (drunks and pigeons) – but they’re on the already-paved parts, which won’t be changing – if those areas became vegetation those issues may actually go away… Sometimes we just report on proposals, but when there’s an issue of importance or with a strong common view we feed in a collective view, and that’s what we have done in this case with this letter to Wandsworth planners commenting on Asda / WalMart’s proposals.

Comment on Wandsworth planning application 2020-3073Download

Controversial plans have been submitted by Asda to completely destroy the park that surrounds their Lavender Hill store. They want to remove all the vegetation, and pave over it with tarmac and a glued gravel finish. It’s easy to see why they want to do this – looking after the greenery takes time and costs them money, it’d be much easier for them not to have to get someone out every few months to prune the bushes.

But the greenery here matters – because it’s one of the very few patches of green left in a very dense urban area, and it shields surrounding restaurants and houses from a rather blank and busy car park. The recent (and expensive) streetscape and paving improvements to Lavender Hill were deliberately designed to enhance the square in front of the Asda entrance, and make the most of the greenery. There’s a reason why the greenery was included in the original planning permissions for the development all those years ago.

This seems very odd timing – given that the (excellent) Council-funded work to replace the stairs from Asda out to Dorothy Road with a carefully landscaped curving ramp, have only been completed very recently.

We welcome your thoughts on this proposal – and in the interest of fairness we always try to look at all sides of any new proposals – but frankly it’s hard to see this as anything other than a terrible idea! It flies in the fact of efforts to green our town centres and cut carbon emissions, it’s bad for biodiversity, it’s probably bad for rainwater absorption (even if the tarmac is described as ‘porous’), and it will be damaging to the attractiveness of Lavender Hill and the town centre as a whole.

It also suggests a lack of imagination – it’ll make an already dated and not-too-beautiful store look even less attractive to customers (many of whom arrive on foot), and there are plenty of people who could probably look after the gardens on a voluntary basis, if Asda really aren’t interested.

Other changes are also planned, which are uncontroversial – for example Asda plan to repaint the while parts of the building in dark grey, and to refurbish the clock (which has been broken for years), the entrance steps, and the rather worn-out travelator. The trees in the service area to the east of Asda are also proposed for destruction. But the standout part of the plan is definitely the destruction of the park – with all the areas shown in red in the map below planned to be torn up and permanently paved over.

It’s not too late to comment on the planning application – where you can object, make a general comment (or support, if you reckon we’ve got this one all wrong!) – go to the Wandsworth planning website, and search for application number 2020/3073. Local input and concerns can swing the balance on decisions like these – if more than three valid objections are received, for example, decisions get escalated – and if decisions go to appeal, the views of residents can also be important.

But be quick – your author has been too busy with work and has only just spotted this one, and while the Council planning officers are very sensible and do generally do their best to accept late comments (the deadline is tomorrow), they can’t go on forever.

Posted in Environment, Planning | 6 Comments

A new cycle lane – and less car parking – on Lavender Hill

Posted on August 10, 2020 by David

The Coronavirus is changing travel habits – with a steep drop in bus & train use, and a similarly steep increase in journeys by cycle or in cars. And our roads are being adapted to this.

Lavender Hill has always been a popular cycle route – thanks to bus lanes along most of its length that mean cyclists aren’t always dodging cars, and fairly wide lanes that mean it’s fairly safe. But there were several long gaps in the bus lanes, as well several parking bays (that only operated outside of peak travel hours) where cyclists had to steer out to the maion traffic lane.

To makes cycling safer, these issues have now been patched up: a cycle lane has been added along many of the gaps (pictured above), and the parking bays have been removed (pictured below – you can see where the old parking bays have been painted out). Much more of the road now marked with double yellow lines; with single yellows in areas where shops will need to take deliveries.

The bus lanes also now operate at all times – rather than operating part time as normal traffic lanes.

This isn’t exactly a ‘cycle superhighway’, just a bit of paint – but it should hopefully help keep cars away from bikes, and reduce the risk of accidents.

Losing parking places is never popular, and will cause some concern for some traders on the street. That said, these ones were so ‘part time’ that they weren’t used especially heavily. The side streets remain open for parking for shoppers – almost all of it with (unusually for London) modern and fully functional parking meters that take cards & contactless payments.

Posted in Transport, Useful to know | 4 Comments

Lavender Hill’s Pizza Express is reopening

Posted on August 4, 2020 by David

It’s a difficult time to be in the restaurant trade, whether you’re an independent trader or a large nationwide chain. Amid a painful series of layoffs and closures, it’s maybe not surprising that Pizza Express has been the latest to announce cuts; with plans to close around 67 of their restaurants – about 15% of the total.

They’re one of Lavender Hill’s most prominent tenants, with the big corner unit on the slope down to the station. Reliable quality, a carefully designed customer loyalty programme and helpful staff giving good service mean it’s consistently done a healthy trade, helped along by having established itself as a favourite haunt for children’s parties on weekend mornings. The decor is loosely themed around (of course) the Lavender Hill Mob.

And the good news is that our local branch has been confirmed as being included the first 150 or so restaurants that are reopening – following a successful small trial. It plans to be up and running again on the 6th August.

Both of the Wandsworth branches (Trinity Road & Old York Road) are also included in this first wave of reopenings, although the future of the Battersea Bridge Road branch is more uncertain. It remains closed for now and while it may be in a later waves of openings (there are several hundred more still set to reopen down th eline), it certainly seems that the longer a branch is left closed, the more likely it is that it will be one of those that never reopens.

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In pictures: A charming Book Swap on Shirley Grove, Battersea

Posted on July 31, 2020 by David

This lovingly designed and remarkably well-stocked book swap is on Shirley Grove – at the very south eastern corner of the Shaftesbury Estate.

There’s a note – “During the COVID period please feel free to use the bookswap for other items you think people might need and feel free to take those without swapping if you need them. Please note that this is quite a sunny spot so things like chocolate will melt”.

We don’t know who has built and installed it, but we salute their public spiritedness!

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Revealed: The future of Arding & Hobbs (Debenhams)

Posted on July 30, 2020 by David

As we confirmed some time ago – Debenhams at Clapham Junction will never reopen. It’s a great shame to lose it, and our sympathy is with our many readers who used to work there. But it raises a very immediate question of what happens next with our local landmark.

The owner of the building is W.RE (W. Real Estate limited). They bought the building a few years ago, expecting that Debenhams would probably depart at some stage. Everything accelerated as Debenhams started to run into financial difficulties last year, and asked for rent cuts. W.RE refused and Debenhams confirmed that “the store would remain trading until – at least – 23 June 2020”, although no exit date was set yet. Unfortunately came the Covid19 crisis, and the department stores decided comprehensively not to reopen for even a few months.

A post by Clapham Junction Action Group, following discussions with the project developers.

Authors: Cyril Richert & David Curran

In the meantime it appears that the new owner was carrying extensive research on future developments, working with architects and consultants on multiple options. As W.RE develop plans for the building’s future they have run a series of public webinars, where they have been commendably frank about their plans for the building. They have also been happy to have detailed discussions with community groups such as the Clapham Junction Action Group – which we took part in last week.

This is a very important moment for Clapham Junction – it’s our landmark building, and as the largest unit apart from Asda it’s also a flagship part of the trade of the town centre – even in Debenhams’ most troubled stage, having a major store that sold a lot of things here was important in attracting shoppers to the town centre as a whole, and a lot of the smaller and independent businesses nearby benefitted from this. T K Maxx and Boots are understandably popular, but every local town centre has one – but only Clapham Junction had a department store!

If W.RE get this right, Clapham Junction will benefit…  but get it wrong and the problems will be widely felt for many years!  Which is why we’ve been reassured by the frank and open way the developers have engaged so far. They are clearly very conscious of the importance of the building they have bought, and we welcome their commitment to take an approach that makes the most of its potential. In the rest of this article we explore the emerging proposals in some detail, picking out some aspects we know have been especially welcomed, as well as areas where we have concerns.

Most of the building will change from retail, to office space

Initial rumours suggested hotel use for the upper levels, and W.RE confirmed this was explored. Indeed the few mid-range hotels we do have in the area do very well (especially the Premier Inn along Lavender Hill, always full and currently being extended due to high demand). However, the very deep floors mean that the hotel would either have rooms without windows (not ideal – maybe OK in super-central spots), or a fundamentally inefficient hotel layout. They also recognised that a lot of the character of the building, such as the elegant proportions, the high ceilings, and the still-visible roof decoration, would be lost if it was split up into many small rooms.

Continue reading →
Posted in Arding & Hobbs, Business, Planning, Retail | 3 Comments

In pictures: A quiet morning in Battersea’s Shaftesbury Estate

Posted on July 21, 2020 by David

We’ve tried to capture, in 60 photos, a typically quiet weekday morning on the Shaftesbury Estate – the maze of Victorian cottages occupying the low lying area north of Lavender Hill. Unusually the text isn’t ours – but instead, it’s a direct quote of the introduction to Wandsworth Council’s admirably readable “Shaftesbury Park Estate Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Strategy“. It’s a much better read than it sounds – if our quotes spark your interest, the strategy has lots more detail about the history of the estate, including maps and original photos, and is available on Wandsworth’s website here.

The detailed design of the Shaftesbury Park Estate is based upon the English Victorian worker’s cottage. The historic street layout and the relationship of built form to the railway and major access road via Lavender Hill define the framework of the area. War damage has led to infilling of gap sites throughout the estate, although this is generally in the form of small two storey plain modern cottages, distinct from the originals, these buildings have less of an impact on the wider area but do not detract from the overall quality of the estate. The traditional pattern of development, building lines and plot sizes are generally respected and has been used to dictate the scale of bomb-damaged sites.

Continue reading →
Posted in Street by street, Useful to know | 7 Comments

The proposed block of flats on Parma Crescent has shrunk… and maybe disappeared.

Posted on July 20, 2020 by David

A while back we reported on a proposal to replace an unusually small house which had an unusually large garden on Parma Crescent with a rather larger building housing five flats. We didn’t say much about it, but it later proved quite a controversial proposal, attracting 44 objections, and not much in the way of supportive comment.

At the beginning of July, the plans were changed part way through the process – with the side of the building closest to Lavender Hill chopped back somewhat, an the height of the roof reduced slightly as well.

In the artists’ impression above the blue dotted line represents the outline shape of the previous proposal, as viewed from Eccles Road – and compare it to the new updated plans. While the general gist of the plans, and the general design of the planned building, remain much the same, we now have a slightly smaller building that is more similar to the height of the rest of the terrace, and which has a larger space between it and the back of the buildings facing Lavender Sweep.

There has clearly been some effort made to address some of the issues raised in the planning process so far. It’s clear that one of the main issues that had emerged was the impact of the new building on the level of light reaching the gardens and back windows of the buildings on Lavender Sweep – which is presumably why that part of the building has been rather chopped back. The old and new proposals are shown side by side below.

It’s clear that the design has also been made to look a bit more like the neighbouring houses (with a more similar roof angle,), and in doing so has also lost several of the windows and balconies on the upper levels, as well as a fair bit of space on the top floor that had previously been provided by the steep roof pitch. Compared to the original proposals (below), the balconies have also been moved so that they overlook the street more, and neighbouring properties less.

As a reminder – here’s the house that is currently on the site. For more detail of the previous plans, see our article from when the plans were first put out. And if you want to see the detailed plans, you can do this on Wandsworth’s planning website – where you should search for planning application number 2020/0906.

We were going to say that, as the plans have been updated, anyone who previously commented is also of course able to put in a second comment about the updated plans – including about whether they have addressed any concerns. However while we were writing this article, the planning application was withdrawn by the applicants. It’s never really clear why plans get withdrawn – this can mean that the applicants got the feeling it was due for rejection, or that the applicants decided to do a more fundamental reworking of the proposal. Either way we’ll keep you posted if (as seems likely) there are updated plans in the future.

Posted in Housing, Planning | 1 Comment