Update on New Covent Garden - A local alternative to Borough Market? - KOV Meeting April 7th 2011

Helen Evans from the Covent Garden Market Authority came to speak to the KOV forum about the future of the New Covent Garden Market in Vauxhall.  She first reminded everybody that the 3rd public exhibition on the market had been held in March, but wanted to give the key highlights on the plans for redeveloping the site.

Unbeknown to many, there are 200 companies and 2500 people on 57 acres between Wandsworth Road and Nine Elms that remain a "hidden secret" of the area behind a brick wall.  The site is being redeveloped because the building is older than 20 years and much of it is no longer fit for purpose, but there are many vibrant firms that need their futures secured.

* The northern site will be given to a private development partner to give Covent Garden the money to build on the rest of the site.

* The whole site is part of the Vauxhall Nine Elms Battersea Opportunity Area Framework

* For the people that live in the area, one big pluses will be that part of the site will be developed into a "food focus for London".  There's an opportunity to showcase the amazing range of fruit, veg and flowers to the wider community.

* The second advantage is that the market site will be opened up and access provided through to the river.  Pascal Street (off the Wandsworth Road), which Sainsburys exit comes on to is a dead end that can be opened up.  There are two routes that could be opened up with holes punched into the railway arches.

* The whole redevelopment will be named The Garden.  The market has always been known as "The Garden" in the trade, and Helen Evans wasn't entirely sure about being the "new" Covent Market because it sounds rather like a washing powder.  In future, it will be referred to as The Garden.

 * The Covent Garden Market would be the start of the proposed linear park/road for the Nine Elms area.

One question was asked about the Northern Line Extension, to which Helen Evans responded, "to us, as a business, it brings absolutely no benefits whatsoever because... we have 200 businesses moving large boxes, and most of the business is vehicular... a tube station doesn't benefit us... it is not something we're particularly keen to have... it is being driven by other businesses in the area".

Another question concerned the width of the linear park which Helen Evans clarified would be 40-60 metres at that point.  (I feel on this point that it rather depends which document you read, but more of that in a later post).   In addition, the Sunday market would probably not be continued, but part of the Garden could be turned into a retail market.  It would likely be less of a general market, but with a stronger food focus.  Somebody asked whether it would be like Borough, but the response indicated that what was sold on site would be authentic to the local community eg. Portuguese .  Borough Market, it was pointed out, is held to be a tourist destination and somewhat expensive, but the heart of New Covent Garden market is fresh produce so it could be that the business built on site would be more accessible to the public of the local area.  It would thus likely have a different emphasis to Borough.

A number of questions were raised from the presentation.  I felt that Helen Evans was rather unfairly attacked, especially since she presented as a local business representative instead of sending the usual big name developers.  He presentation was extraordinarily clear and unrushed.  Unfortunately, people laid into her somewhat on matters that concerned the wider Vauxhall Nine Elms area rather than the New Covent Garden market, but her speech was remarkably clear and her vision for the market and passion for its involvement with the local community shone through.  The only point on which she was unable to provide clarification was the height of the tall buildings that would appear on the site that was to be given over to residential development.  (I always assumed that this would be sold to developers, but perhaps not).

New Covent Garden Market Exhibition (photos all viewable from booklet)

(Image taken from p23&24 of The Garden at New Covent Garden Market Public Exhibition March 2011 Booklet )

Just a quick note to say that I dropped into the New Covent Garden Market exhibition in Nine Elms / Battersea today.  Had I known that all of the exhibition boards (including photos) were available from this booklet online, I might not have made the trek!  However, if you want to see the photos in their huge blown-up form, it might be worth a trip.  I was also given a very useful introduction to the exhibition by one of the Market's representatives on site, who noted that their plans are only in outline, and that if all goes to schedule the proposals will be submitted to Wandsworth Council this summer (2011) and decided at a Planning Committee to be held at the end of 2011.  (Clearly, that's a big "if", but maybe Wandsworth are very proactive).  If the development went ahead, building works would likely start some time in 2013.

I might add further comments on the New Covent Garden plans at some stage.  Most controversially, they're selling off the Flower Market, currently sited at Vauxhall to pay for a new combined wholesale and flower market on the Nine Elms site.  On the old flower market, there are plans for two very tall towers, billed as the "gateway" to the linear park (which is interesting, considering I vaguely thought that Vauxhall Square (CLS) was billed in the same way.  Considering that we're doomed to end up with all of these towers, a few more won't make any difference, right?

Folk from the Vauxhall end may be disappointed that many of the outlines in their book didn't contain any of the towers that are currently proposed eg. Vauxhall Tower (CLS) or Vauxhall Island site (Kylun) or Bondway.  Their diagrams only show the buildings that have been agreed, so it's tricky to imagine from the images how it might look if all of the proposed developments were present.

New Covent Garden Market exhibition on The Garden (3rd March - 5th March)

(Sketch taken from New Covent Garden website)

Covent Garden Market Authority (CGMA) has announced the dates for the third public exhibition of their plans for "The Garden" (the UK's largest fresh produce market) at New Covent Garden Market in Vauxhall / Nine Elms as 3rd March - 5th March (see below).

There have been two previous exhibitions on New Covent Garden Market (one in 2009 and the other in February 2010).  For some reason, I don't seem to have a record of these, but it's only recently I've begun to track the buildings so closely.  However, the redevelopment section on the New Covent Garden website is truly comprehensive, so I suggest you begin there if you're interested in the progress of their ideas.   Also, there are some sketches available from one of the previous exhibitions which give the general idea of New Covent Garden's aim, even if these will be amended at the next exhibition.

Anyhow, most local people I've spoken to have been generally supportive of plans to sensitively redevelop the market (currently it's a bit of a concrete wilderness, and is not accessible to the public except on Sundays when it hosts a giant boot fair). So, now New Covent Garden Market claim to have incorporated comments received a wide range of stakeholders and tenants on the Market.  The third (and final) exhibition will display new information and images about all the elements of the site prior to the application submission to Wandsworth Borough Council.

The exhibition will be based in the Yvonne Carr Community Centre on Thessaly Road (in Battersea) so it's a bit of a trek for Vauxhall residents although the site plans will affect people in SW8 and SE11 just as much as in Battersea.
Thursday 3 March (4.00pm – 8.00pm)
Friday 4 March (4.00pm – 8.00pm)
Saturday 5 March (10.00am – 5.00pm)

Please note that this falls on the same weekend as the next Nine Elms Sainsbury's consultation.

Wandsworth Council and transport / town centre - Part 5 of 5 from Vauxhall Nine Elms Battersea Exhibition VNEB

Finally, just for the record, I wanted to add the final in the series of VNEB exhibition boards. There is so much going on locally that it's difficult to keep up! These boards mostly show Wandsworth Council's outlines on the VNEB, which is importance since the majority of the VNEB falls on their patch.  In my view, the boards aren't quite as useful as the ones that Lambeth Council supplied on account of the fact that they don't summarise all of the buildings that have been granted planning permission to date.  Maybe there are too many to list (or they've not yet been declared), but without an idea of that, it's difficult to imagine the volume of housing and commercial space that will hit the area:

This board clearly outlines the scale of the development.  16,000 new homes means the arrival of a vast number of new residents.  I fail to see how 20,000 - 25,000 new jobs will be created when industrial space is being reduced, but perhaps we'll all be surprised:

Note the mention of the "linear park", linking Vauxhall to Battersea.  This will not provide adequate green space given the likely population density, even once the parks at Spring Gardens and Vauxhall have been taking into account:

The additional 800 primary school aged children will be catered for by /one/ primary school.  Goodness knows whether the other primary schools in the locality can be expanded to meet demand.  The 600 secondary school aged pupils will presumably have to be placed in existing schools.  I'm not sure whether a school feasibility study has been completed, but this /sounds/ a tad unrealistic even to my unknowledgable ears.  Battersea gets a library.  Vauxhall probably won't (but then, libraries aren't really in vogue at the moment, are they?):

Transport.   One of my favourite topics!  This poster indicates improved bus services, new bus routes and increased bus frequency.  It also shows enhanced railway stations (but doesn't mention enhanced services) so this probably just means the stations will get a make over (see here for Vauxhall rail station refurbishment).  Cyclists are mentioned here in terms of "better provision", but it doesn't clearly outline cycle lanes or segregated cycle paths on roads or anything like that.  There's mention of the proposed Northern line tube to Battersea, with an added station at Nine Elms (my favourite option, but it probably wouldn't do much to relieve congestion Kennington tube station).  However, I think the huge cost of this project will eventually mean that the area will get a tram (which is one of the proposed options in the giant VNEB consultation document).  I suppose another option might be to add a new National Rail station between Queenstown and Vauxhall, but looking at the map, this would probably be too far from the power station to meet the new residents' needs:

Here's a model, which I think illustrates how nasty and oversized the new St George tower will look. The architecture is not even particularly imaginative, just a round tall tower.  This model is not illustrative of all of the buildings planned for Vauxhall.  For some reason, some of these have been missed off.  The orange line on the plan is the new proposed tube route:

Just for the record, here are the last few signs up at the exhibition, and completes this rather long and tedious set of plans and photos in the VNEB series.

Part 1 (Ballymore section) of VNEB exhibition is here.
Part 2 (Lambeth Council section) of VNEB exhibition is here.
Part 3 (Tideway Wharf section) of VNEB exhibition is here.
Part 4 (Sainsbury's Towers section) of VNEB exhibition is here.

New Covent Garden Market - the procurement begins - is it premature?

I'm not too sure about the timing of the announcement, given that the Mayor's Nine Elm Plan has had its deadline response extended until the end of this month (and therefore, the consultation is still technically under way), but the FT is reporting that Jonas Deloitte are already working on the procurement of a development partner, starting this week.

I realise that the New Covent Garden already finished their consultation, so I am perhaps wrong in thinking that, whilst the Mayor's plan is still being consulted on, the NCG people are rather premature.  However, given the current comprehensive objections/suggestions that I know will arise from the Mayor's consultation, I'd have expected them to wait until all of the responses had been submitted. 

What happens if an objection to the Mayor's plan is significant enough to affect the NCG Market?  Wouldn't the developers need to be aware of that before they begin bidding?

US Embassy and Regeneration of New Covent Garden Market

All of the local area blogs have recently been buzzing with the news of the relocation of the US embassy to a yet unknown site in the Nine Elms quarter of Vauxhall. Although I say, "yet unknown", a story on the "bd architect's website" refers to the embassy location as the "2ha site" that is "close to Terry Farrell’s high-security MI6 building and the proposed Battersea Power Station development".

However, a piece of news, just spotted in the Evening Standard, indicates that the New Covent Garden fruit and vegetable market is about to receive funding for redevelopment. So now we'll have lots of US embassy employees munching apples wandering about the area. I've never been to New Covent Garden Market but they have a snazzy looking website. In the redevelopment section, they suggest the redevelopment will provide:

an invitation to the private sector to innovate on how the site could be more than just a market - becoming a focus for food and indeed flowers for London

I /like/ the idea of having an entire "focus" for food and flowers in this part of South London. I just hope that Borough market, and East St market, and Oval Farmers market can all keep flourishing at the same time...

Now, regarding the US embassy, it's obviously quite exciting that a major "player" wants to move to the area, but I'm more convinced that the embassy is moving for security reasons, than that they're moving primarily to be a part of the development of the South Bank! I figure that they want to be on the Thames so that they can use motor boats to get away if there's a terrorist attack. I'm vaguely concerned about traffic/planning/nuisance implications of the new US embassy in the area because I know what Mayfair residents have had to put up with, due to the recent installation of tank traps around the current embassy site. Also, I wonder whether it's sensible to have so many "target" buildings eg. MI6 and US embassy and Parliament all so close to one another...

The developments are all just outside the SE11 area, but if it all comes to fruition, I imagine our area will see development (good or bad, I know not) as a result of general investment. I wonder if there's something that they know that we don't, ie. whether anybody is about to enhance the transport infrastructure or go ahead with proposed public transport ideas, such as the Cross River Tram (hint, hint) to cope with all of the new developments.