OPEN Dalston has learned that - following discussions between the developer, Transport for London, Hackney Council and the Greater London Authority - the authorities are unlikely to insist upon any affordable housing at all in the Dalston Kingsland towerblock scheme.
An artists impression of the 50 metre high, 18-storey tower planned next to Dalston Kingsland station. Although dressed in green, it doesn't meet the Code 5 standard for sustainable homes.
Last December the government refused Hackney grant funding for upgrades to Dalston Kingland station. The developer now argues that if it is to pay all the £1.7 million, for remodelling the station frontage and installing lifts to the two platforms, the towerblock scheme is not sufficiently profitable to include any affordable flats at all. The penthouse duplex apartments in the exclusive private 'eco-tower' are to be marketed for about £1,000,000 each ( £1 million).
The development will dominate the historic high street, its listed buildings and overshadow local homes, businesses, Colvestone Primary School and Ridley Road market. The developer argues that it is not financially viable to build anything smaller.
The scheme submitted for planning permission, comprising 130 flats for private sale, originally included 17 flats at "affordable" prices - just 13% of the total although the official policy target is 50% . The developer argued that if it included 50% affordable flats it would only make £7.7 million profit and by including 17 affordable flats it would make only £10.9 million which is a "lower level of profit than the accepted norm". Now it is offering no affordable housing at all.
The scheme crams as many flats onto the site as possible - double the official recommended density in one of the most crowded wards in one of the most crowded boroughs in London. It extracts the maximum development value from the site but at Dalston's expense
It's not too late to make your views known to the Council. Send them in an email to planningconsultation@hackney.gov.uk and put "Planning Application 2011/3439 : 51- 57 Kingsland High Street" in the Subject line
Although the 'official' deadline expired on 30.1.12 Hackney Council have informed us that it will consider all comments received about this planning application up to the date of the Planning Sub-Committee hearing which is expected to be on 7th March.
You can send your comments either by email to planningconsultation@hackney.gov.uk or by post to Hackney Planning Department, Hackney Service Centre, 1 Hillman Street, London E8 1DY ( fax: 020 8356 8110).
You should refer, in the subject heading, to Planning Application 2011/3439: Dalston Green at 51-57 Kingsland Road E8 2JS.
You still have time to comment about a developer's application for planning permission to build an 18-storey, 50 metre high towerblock of private flats next to Dalston Kingsland station.
Is it a beacon, a landmark building, adding to Dalston's identity and character? The 50 metre high tower will dominate and cast shadows across the Kingsland area. Like a lighthouse in reverse, it will steal the sunlight from public space, homes, businesses, locally listed buildings and Ridley Road market. The tower will cause higher wind speeds locally so that some public areas around the building will become "unsuitable for standing" (sometimes, the consultants say, "the criteria for safety of all pedestrians including sensitive pedestrians and cyclists is exceeded").
Will it meet housing need locally? There will be 130 flats for sale but only 17 flats (13%) are to be "affordable". Policy guidelines are for 50% affordable housing. The "exemplary" design is so poor that 30% of flats don't meet the official minimum sizes. The remaining private flats (87% unaffordable) are in the exclusive "Dressed in Green" tower, with its a own secure entrance. The penthouse duplex apartments there will each cost around £1,000,000 (£1 million).
Is it environmentally sustainable? The build quality does not reach the Code 5 standard for sustainable homes. Although the building is 'dressed in green' there is no explanation of who will undertake the necessary maintenance of the planting, or the urban agriculture proposed, or pay for it. No vegetation is sustainable on the bleak North Face of the tower. Is it green - or is it greenwash?
Does it respect its neighbours? This 1902 Grade II Listed building, Cooke's old Pie and Eels shop, is next to the development site. It is one of an exquisite group of buildings with diverse architecture and fine detailing. The tower will overlook four conservation areas. The listed buildings directly affected also include the Rio Cinema, Colvestone Primary School and locally listed buildings opposite at 74-76 Kingsland High Street. Does the development acknowledge and respect its context....at all?
Is it gross exploitation of Dalston - a developer's try on? The 2012 Dressed in Green development is six to eight storeys on the high street, eighteen storeys behind. Densities well exceed the London Plan guidelines. It dominates the 3/4 storey high street. It diminishes it's neighbours. It extracts huge development value from the site - but at the expense of the surrounding area.
Where is the public benefit to justify this over-development of the site? The developer expects to net a profit of over £10,000,000 (£10 million). What will Dalston get back for all it will lose? About £500,000 - which is about 1% of the development's resale value. The developer will give the money to Transport for London and Hackney Council to spend.
It's not too late to make your views known to the Council. Send them in an email to planningconsultation@hackney.gov.uk and put "Planning Application 2011/3439 : 51- 57 Kingsland High Street" in the Subject line
A planning application has been made for an 18 storey tower stepping down to 6 storeys fronting Kingsland High Street next to Dalston Kingsland overground station. The tower backs onto Boleyn Road. The development is for 130 flats, a large ground floor shop (currently Peacocks) and the developer is to re-model the neighbouring station entrance to make it more accessible including lifts servicing the platforms.
Of the 130 flats planned, only 17 flats (13%) are to be "affordable" and the remainder (87% unaffordable) are for private sale. Policy guidelines are for 50% affordable housing. The affordable flats are all planned to be in the smaller block fronting Kingsland High Street but the developer is expected to argue that they too should be sold off to pay for the work to the station.
The number of flats on the site far exceeds the London Plan guidelines for appropriate density. The developer claims the flats are of 'exemplary design' although it admits that only 70% of the flats fully meet the London Plan's 'minimum space standards'. These factors indicate a planned over-development of the site.
The scale of the building will result in overshadowing of local residents' homes and gardens. There will be accelerated wind speeds locally so that some public areas around the building will be, the consultants have found, "unsuitable for standing" (sometimes, they say, "the criteria for safety of all pedestrians including sensitive pedestrians and cyclists is exceeded").
Although the building is dressed in green there is little explanation of who will maintain the planting, or undertake the urban agriculture proposed, or pay for it. No vegetation is sustainable on the bleak North Face of the tower (Imagine, for a moment, the building without any greenery. Ed.)
The 1902 neighbouring group - one of the finest surviving terraces on the high street which will be dominated by the development although the developer claims that the "impacts on townscape and heritage are minimal".
The proposed blocks will dominate the 3-4 storey Victorian high street. The site neighbours a terrace of finely detailed 1902 buildings including the Grade II listed property at 41 Kingsland High Street (currently Shanghai restaurant, formerly Cooke's Eels Pie and Mash). Other listed buildings affected include the Rio Cinema, Colvestone Primary School and locally listed buildings opposite at 74-76 Kingsland High Street.
It's not too late to make your views known to the Council. Send them in an email to planningconsultation@hackney.gov.uk and put "Planning Application 2011/3439 : 51- 57 Kingsland High Street" in the Subject line
On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me...
... Twelve legends dining
This image, by OPEN's Brian Cumming, shows some of the stars of popular entertainment who were associated with the now demolished 1886 Dalston Circus and Theatre buildings. They include Sir Robert Fossett (1886 circus owner), Marie Lloyd (1870-1922 Hackney's very own international music hall star), Stevie Wonder (played there in 1963 with his American band), The Club Four Aces produced Desmond Dekker (in 1969 - with his first UK reggae hit 'The Israelites'), Bob Marley (ate curry goat there), The Prodigy (began their career at the Labyrinth) and then there was Sid and Nancy.
You can learn about the demolition of old Dalston by watching Winstan Whitter's short film "Save our Heritage".
The retail units in Dalston Square were originally planned and built to try and attract national chain stores. Nevertheless the Starbucks news provoked outrage amongst Dalston's twiterati. "Up and coming Dalston just became got up and left" said one. Dalston's twiterati champion local character and the numerous independent businesses opening in Dalston. If the Council pursues its love affair with brand stores could Dalston eventually become an identikit town centre, a non-place, which could be anywhere?
.......Ten Lords a leaping
(Click on image to enlarge)
OPEN's Patron is Lord Low of Dalston. A non-party, cross bench, peer who speaks for the greater common good. He is the President of the European Blind Union amongst his many accomplishments. This year the Low Commission, which Colin Low chaired, has recently achieved substantial reversals of the government's proposed cuts to welfare benefits for disabled people. For many thousands it will "make a difference between existing and a life worth living".
Lord Coe is chairman of the London Olympic Committee for which he is paid over £350,000 pa. He also acts as a global adviser to NIKE and reportedly receives another £100,000 pa from AMT-Sybex, a software company whose client, Thames Water, landed an exclusive deal for the 2012 Olympics shortly after Lord Coe joined them.
Hundreds of local residents' jobs, and safe working conditions for women, were saved this year when the Council did a U-Turn on its planned borough wide policy of "Nil" tolerance towards striptease venues. The Licensing Committee planned to refuse licenses to 'sex entertainment' venues borough-wide which would have criminalised erotic entertainment - striptease, burlesque, gay cabaret - and banned shops selling products which "encourage sexual activity" . The policy targeted two striptease pubs owned by women in Shoreditch.
Local council estate Tenants' Associations, Hackney Trades Unions and the Reverend Paul Turp of Shoreditch Church, feared the return of underground illegal venues, exploitation of women and gangsterism. A successful community campaign, in which 75% of consultees in Shoreditch opposed the "Nil" policy, resulted in the Council making a policy exception and renewing the licenses in Shoreditch this year.
You can find out more about the campaign by watching this short film "Hands Off" in which dancers, costumiers, business owners, the Vicar of St Leonards Church and others all have their say.
Tower Hamlets is currently considering a borough wide "Nil" policy.
........Eight days a week
The Eastern Curve Garden has been so busy it fitted eight days of activities into each seven day week. And it's been so successful it has won the national Landscape Institute President's Award. There has been pumpkin carving, African Tango, lantern making, pizza baking, healthy herbs, grizzley gargoyles, harvest festival, giant crystal light orbs, big banquets, film making, art teaching, garden dens, summer days, brazilian nights, theatre shows, afternoon teas, fundraising, furniture making, terrific totems, story telling, real nappies, scary scarecrows, carnival arts and bar-b-ques.
And that's not even mentioning the gardening activities (see photo) and the next project to build a pineapple hot house (you can help by donating). The events list at Eastern Curve Garden is never ending. Lets hope it never ends. (Watch this space. Carefully! Ed.)
.......Seven years for looting
The courts sat day and night to deliver swift and severe punishments to rioters and looters. Some Hackney residents got long jail sentences, particularly the one who smashed up a police car.
Now, in the age of austerity when money is scarce, and despite the Council's proposed 'conservation led ' scheme, the buildings remain derelict and the two surviving businesses are at risk.
The Council proposes to sell the terraces off to a developer and has consulted on a re-development scheme where only the facades of the buildings will be retained.
OPEN Dalston member Winstan's Whitter's documentary Legacy in the dust tells the story of Dalston's legendary reggae club, its relationship with the Council and the police and how it went on to become the rave venue Labyrinth.
In 2007 the authorities demolished the club's original home in the historic Dalston Theatre buildings at 14 Dalston Lane. They crushed it, ground it up and used it in the foundations for Barratt's New Dalston tower block development of unaffordable flats.
Thus we lost our historic buildings in Dalston and the thirty year cultural legacy of our African-Carribean community. So now the authorities are calling the new tower blocks after the artists who performed in the club they demolished - Sledge Tower, Wonder House, Marley House etc. Patronising hypocrisy...or what?
The Worship of Mammon 1909 by Evelyn de Morgan - updated in the age of austerity
In the fourth year of the credit freeze, after the bubble burst and banks went bust, sustainable innovation continues in Dalston. There were three hens on the roof of FARM:Shop;Bootstrap roof's garden was harvested, eaten and then morphed into a cinema for Hackney Film Festival, its car park was transformed into a night market;Cafe Oto saw the return of the Arkestra;Arcola Theatre opened its circus tent; Kingsland Road shop windows are turning into art galleries; the perennial Vortex never fails to attract; Dalston is turning into Cupcake Alley with all the new coffee shops and Passing Clouds still grooves 'til the sun comes up.
........Two subsidies
Barratt's Dalston Square. Phase 1 on the left. Phase 2, on the Slab above the station, on the right.
Barratt have also been pulling strings to support the recently announced "simplification" of planning rules - the "presumption in favour of development". Hello to the Big Business Society. Goodbye bio-diversity and local character and, if you can't pay the rent or the bank, then its goodbye to you too. On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me ...a retail opportunity
This year the Council approved an amended Dalston Area Action Plan.Two years ago OPEN Dalston consulted the local community and responded to Hackney's proposals for a massive residential/retail led 8-storey redevelopment of Dalston Cross shopping centre. The new DAAP is now proposing "creating the conditions for national high street stores to be attracted to the area", building two 15-story towers to dominate Kingsland Road and developing extensive "shopping circuits" which include turning the community's Eastern Curve Garden into a "green shopping mall".(Are they mad? -Ed)
Who is persuading the Council of the benefits of such schemes ? It turns out that the "Dressed in Green" tower (see photo) is being promoted by the PR company, Four Communications, which has recruited Hackney's Deputy Mayor Karen Alcock and Councillor Alan Laing(formerly a member of Barratt's PR firm Hard Hat)
".... The latest blocks, blindly monolithic, devour pavements and abolish bus stops. They aspire to an occult geometry of capital: Queensbridge Quarter, Dalston Square. Everything is contained, separate, protected from flow and drift. No junk mail, please. No doorstep hawkers. No doorsteps. The big idea is to build in-station car parks, to control ‘pedestrian permeability’, so that clients of the transport system exit directly into a shopping mall. Where possible, a supermarket operator underwrites the whole development, erecting towers on site, so that Hackney becomes a suburb of Tesco, with streets, permanently under cosmetic revision, replaced by 24-hour aisles. Light and weather you can control. Behaviour is monitored by a discreet surveillance technology." Iain Sinclair, London Review of Books, June 2009
The multi-talented award winningwriter and theatre directorOlusola Oyeleye is to star as the guest artist at Arcola Theatre's "Notes & Quotes" series this Sunday evening in Dalston.
The evening will also feature music from the Dalston based jazz quintet The Dulce Tones and there will be improvised collaborations between the musicians and poets. The Dulce Tones will feature the trumpet and flugelhorn playing of Loz Speyer who's band Time Zone's recent Cuban influenced album "Crossing the line" has attracted critical acclaim.
The event, "Notes and Quotes", is the second in a series of poetry and jazz events and will take place at 7pm on Sunday 11 December in Arcola Theatre, Ashwin Street, Dalston E8. Tickets are available in advance and on the door.
The development will dominate the historic high street, its listed buildings and overshadow local homes, businesses, Colvestone Primary School and Ridley Road market. The developer argues that it is not financially viable to build anything smaller.
The scheme crams as many flats onto the site as possible - double the official recommended density in one of the most crowded wards in one of the most crowded boroughs in London. It extracts the maximum development value from the site but at Dalston's expense
OPEN Dalston member Winstan's Whitter's documentary 
