Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Wards Corner alternative plan launched - planning meeting looms
The Wards Corner Community Coalition has now lodged its own plan with the Council’s Planning Department.
The wordpress website is now ‘live’ and all documents relating to the community plan can be viewed here. See drawings of how the buildings can come back to life, and details of proposed management structures and funding.
Meanwhile more nifty moves from the council friends of Grainger the developer shows that they are more determined than ever to push through the wholesale demolition of the area. They have added an extra Labour Party member to the planning committee, so now there will be six Labour to four Liberal Democrat. Last time, with nine on the committee, it decided by five votes to four, to reject the Grainger plan.
The meeting on the new railroaded-through Grainger plan is on Monday 25th June, 7pm, at the Civic Centre in Wood Green. It's not too late to add your comments about the plan, they will be circulated to the members of the committee. See here, click Comment on Application. Reading through others' comments will give you some idea of the issues involved.
Tags for Forum Posts: grainger, planning, seven sisters, ward's corner
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Christopher Fowler on
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Candy - I can only comment on the building as I can see it. I am not in the privileged position of having been inside to see the beautiful cornices, lightwells or views. My comments are based on what I can see now, and what I see is a group of undistinguished buildings, of which there are many better-preserved examples all over London. A sentimental attachment to the elegant decay of Wards Corner is not a good argument for preventing a re-development which would help to re-vitalise the area.
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Permalink Reply by sophia c on
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Candy, thanks for adding this description about Wards Corner Store, and it is absolutely right that a building is first and foremost about the quality of the spaces it hosts inside and how well these can support a variety of functions, it should never be just about the pretty facade!
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Sophia - It's hard to follow your arguments through the fog of architectural jargon. I'm sorry, but I feel no "sense of place" from that building. In fact, any "sense of place" in that area is influenced far more by the heavy traffic on the high road, the ugly Tesco building, and hideous Gyratory system. The only sense that building gives me is of decay, obsolescence and neglect. As for "historic roots", who knows about those, and who can tell them by looking at the building? And once I see the word "holistic" (bereft of meaning at the hands of jargon-obsessed architects), I know you have lost your argument. None of what you are saying has any meaning to 99% of the people who live in the area, or use its current shops etc. Do you live in the area? Do you shop there? Or do you prefer Waitrose, with its "reassuringly more expensive" products?
People in Tottenham need jobs, homes and decent services, not platitudes from white gentrifiers.
I shall be heartily relieved when this war of attrition is over, and the redevelopment of Wards Corner, and the surrounding area, can proceed. Almost anything would be better than the way it is now.
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Christopher, I am sorry you feel this way. I live 10 min walk from Tottenham, shop mostly at my Kurdish corner shop 1 min from home (sorry don't like supermarkets whether Waitrose or Tesco, they have been allowed to kill local trade and thus social life in most UK cities through horrendous planning policies) or organic independent shop near my workplace, and I have worked most of my professional life with the most deprived communities in the world from Rwandan survivors of the genocide to asylum seekers in the UK ensuring that their voice, not mine, is being heard. There is no such jargon as you mention in my statement but mostly I find from my experience that you are making wide unfounded assumptions about what people from the area can and cannot understand, and wide assumptions about my lifestyle and my origins too which is very unfortunate since this is not about me. I totally support the regeneration of the area, I am not convinced at all that Grainger's proposal is the right answer in its current form. And I disagree with you that the sense of place is lost in this area. It is in fact right in our face if we stop to look at it with some really interesting and beautiful features both architecturally and in terms of landscape on that stretch of Tottenham High Road, and only minor but clever interventions could bring them out, along with a new development. But you are entitled not to be able to see it, as your comments about Wards Corner Store clearly indicate.
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Sophia - I apologise for suggesting you were a "white gentrifier", or that you would step inside a Waitrose. I completely agree with you about the very dangerous domination of our grocery trade, and the destruction of local stores and businesses by the big chains. However, I believe this to be not the fault of planners, although they too have made mistakes. It has happened because politicians, at all levels, but especially so at the national level, are in the pockets of the big supermarket chains and their party political contributions (stand up, Lord Salisbury). The decisions that have been made are political ones. I have never agreed with them. I hope you noticed that I said the Tesco structure was hideous and beyond any help.
I applaud the fact that you have spent much of your life working to help disadvantgaged people. For what it is worth, I spent 16 years of my life (whilst, of course, working a full-time job) as a trade union activist, working to protect the rights at work of staff at my place of employment (a large university). My health would never have allowed me to go to Rwanda or, indeed, most of the time, outside Britain. I only stopped the trade union activity when my health stopped me. All of us, I hope, in ways which might be very minor, should at least try to be part of a wider community and help others, just as they help us.
On the subject of "jargon", I maintain that your original post was riddled with it. You probably find that hard to see as you are a professional within that field, and are now blind to the fact that you speak a language which has been devalued and is opaque to many citizens.
Of course the Grainger plans are not the best answer to the needs of the area. But in the current political and economic climate, it is likely to be the best we are going to get. And it is significantly less hideous, and anti-human, than either the Tesco building or the vile Apex House. Personally, I'd tear them down and start over with something with a human scale. In the case of Apex House, I think that is now planned; I doubt I shall live long enough to see the Tesco building torn down, but I can still hope.
I spend a lot of time in the area, and live not far away, though closer to Green Lanes. I would agree with you that there are buildings on the West side of the High Road, further up a short way from Wards Corner, which are attractive, or merit, and enhance the area and our experience of it. But I do not agree that this applies to the structures at Wards Corner. Also, the dominant sense of the area - and I mean now the whole stretch of the High Road from the Seven Sisters junction up to Tottenham Green - is of dereliction, neglect, decay; not to mention far too much traffic, pollution and dirt. It is certainly not an area where the average person feels secure and safe once the sun has faded from the sky.
I think I am, in fact, entitled to have a different view from you, and to see things differently. You are incorrect in condemning me for "not to be able to see it". Your comment suggests that you have some superior view of the world, some ability to see beauty or form or structure where mere mortals such as I are unable to see these things. I'd love to see if you can actually point out to me exactly what it is I am unable to see. Go ahead, show me. And don't think that the interior shot posted shows anything like that: it is just another warehouse space, its space interrupted by structural pillars.
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Christopher, the potential of the Wards Corner Store can offer as a space, along with lovely features, is what you cannot see and that is not a condemnation, only an observation based on your comments. See John Harvard Library in Southwark Council, nobody would have given it a second chance especially those using it until it was redone recently, bringing tears in people's eyes and usage going up from 9,000 people a month to 20,000 a month within weeks of it opening. This is what architecture can do for you (see also Alan comments about reusing old buildings). There is no 'superior' view about having a vision for something and realising that not everyone can have the same vision, especially as others not necessarily architects do seem to share my view.
As for my 'professional jargon', I have conversation about architecture every day with 'lay' people because what I am passionate about is buildings and urban spaces that work for people, not architecture for the sake of architecture. But you may say that's because I have been in the architecture field for only a quarter of my 20-year professional life...
In general You seem to feel somehow 'aggravated' by other people's opninions from the tone of your comments on this online discussion. I don't value your opinion less than mine, I just differ on one particular point about the old Store (note that I haven't said anything about the adjacent buildings hosting the market which I think has no specific quality and would agree to replace).
ps - as for the planning policies, yes I agree entirely, it is all about political choices.
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Christopher I forgot to mention that it is funny that you mention 'the platitudes of white gentifriers' when everything about the scheme indicates that white gentifrication is exactly what will happen to the area through the Grainger's proposed development. It can certainly be much better than that...
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Yes, of course the Grainger development will bring in white middle class people. Any re-development will make the area more attractive and result in rises in property values and the attraction of the area to better-off people. That process is happening all over London. What ultimately drives it is a lack of new homes. We need 250,000 a year, and we are getting a fraction of that. Successive governments, since the eighties, have failed to build enough homes, especially public and social housing. Against that background, even your preferred "heritage" development would pull in wealthier people, and ultimately the Latin American markets would not be able to afford the rents. While we live in a society that is in thrall to the "free market", that will always happen.
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I think that gentifrication is driven by political choice ultimately. I can see the Store being brought back to life at much less cost and thus not requiring to get back a higher capital investment through unaffordable commercial rents. But that would require more thinking than what seems to have happened at present. Same for housing, lack of new homes yes - although even if subsidised by the state the vision is to always to get the pay back in a couple of decades rather than over a longer period hence so-called 'affordable' housing hardly affordable for the average earner, let alone the ones earning below that - but also lack of legislation that put a cap on how much one would be allowed to rent or buy as a proportion of their income or protected rent rights (e.g. in France). This would require a cultural-political shift that I think may not be acceptable to enough people for it to happen.
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I'm not sure how gentrification is driven by political choice. Individual choice, yes. The short-term thinking about public housing you identify has not "always" been the case, though it has developed since the eighties and Thatcher. Former governments did not have this short perspective. And I would be all in favour of rent controls, to stop greedy owners pushing up rents.
With reference to the "shift" necessary to produce this, it is not the general population, or the electorate that need to make a shift - the majority are probably in favour already. What is needed is braver politicians who are prepared to stand up to the rich and powerful. There is no chance of that under the current government of posh rich boys, and their millionaire friends.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Old Karl does keep popping up, doesn't he?
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