Harringay online

Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

Sadly, under the much-abused misnomer of  ‘ Seven Sisters Regeneration ’  Haringey Council is pushing ahead with the ill-conceived plans to demolish the local heritage buildings located at Wards Corner, South Tottenham. Since council-backed, private developer Grainger has failed to acquire all the properties on the open market, Haringey Council has started the formal Compulsory Purchase Order process in order to attempt to assemble the site required to pursue this destructive development. This means that long-standing, independent, Tottenham business owners risk being expropriated in favour of a large corporate entity for a project that a sizeable part of the local community is against. The project has debatable regeneration benefits and architectural merit and would have devastating heritage effects in this important conservation area. There is more information here on the Council’s own website.

The Council continues to claim that demolishing the neglected (by whom?) beautiful and interesting buildings of the ex-Wards Corner Department store, the Beauty Shop and Tottenham Wines on West Green road and building a bland and generic, seven storey, glass-fronted building will improve the area. If it does go ahead it will be another chip out of Tottenham’s disintegrating Historic Corridor.

There is still hope that the other plan, the Community Plan may see the light. The Trust, formed to renovate our cherished market and neglected historic buildings, continues its work.

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Objections to the CPO can be made to the National Planning Casework Unit, 5 St Philips Place, Colmore Row, Birmingham B3 2PW.

Or email npcu@communities.gsi.gov.uk

Title your objection “(Wards Corner Regeneration Project) Compulsory Purchase Order 2016.

Give your name, address and interest in the land. As it is our town center then I think we all have an interest in the land. The deadline is 21st October which is an unreasonably short time to do it in.

Hints for objections are;

Viable and sustainable alternative plan

Demolition of an Historic Building and replacement with a block of little architectural merit

No social Housing provided. Just private gated flats

Massive local objection to the Grainger Plan

Seven Sisters Market put at risk of being priced out

Tags for Forum Posts: seven sisters market, ward's corner

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Thanks for the update Pam.

I personally don't have  a problem with the tower on the site of the Corner Picture Theatre (Apex House), but can't see why the terrace or at least the facade can't be retained.

The Corner picture house was was demolished in the early 1970s.

This whole saga is such a sorry tale of ineptitude by Tfl and the council. It is sad because none of it needed to happen. If only the problem had been looked at properly, we could all, by now, have been looking at a beautifully restored and utilized bulding. And what is even worse, is that no lessons seemed to have been learnt from this. But is is not too late. Several CPO's have been recently overturned. So if we all massively object....See above post on how to do it.

You'd likely have a problem with FagPacket Tower if like me you would end up in its massive shadow and have its unlovely facade as your outlook. 

And how cool would it be to have a cinema back on that corner.  Bernie Grant Centre now has a very good setup but only for a couple of dozen people at a time.  I support the Rio when I can but still it's several miles away.

Last day to object to the CPO ill thought out project.

Here's what we will lose...our light in the darker months..Both taken last evening in Seven Sisters.

Just spotted that the deadline has been extended by a week to 27th October...https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1353962211280978&id...

Yes this is very good news indeed.

But I will remain skeptical until I see the "new vision" for the block and area that all the current owners/stakeholders will need to subscribe to.

What a blight this has put on the neighbourhood for so many years. Haringey Council's past regimes have so much to account for with their lack of faith in Tottenham's own talents! The new team in charge needs to really get behind the residents and Seven Sisters businesses to come up with something innovative and inspiring based on empowering local stakeholders and not bowing and scraping to outside interests with their very narrow 15-20% return on investment criteria. Can you imagine what an asset this place would be now if only, all those years ago, "the powers that be" had had faith in the very people they are meant to represent and serve?

And, David Lammy needs to come out in the open, as a black person who himself hails from Tottenham. It is a shame that he did not speak up loudly about all the injustices and the ineffectiveness of the type of "regeneration" that was being foisted on us locals with this ill-conceived scheme. Apparently he was in support of saving the market. This support was not much in evidence - it certainly wasn’t audible - locally. We just didn’t hear it. Just what was he trying to achieve?

So what now too of the sites adjacent to the TfL Wards Corner one. The ones that Grainger plc was "allowed" to compulsorily purchase: the Beauty shop on the corner (which positively contributes to the Seven Sisters & Page Green Conservation Area), the locally listed Tottenham Wines store, the ex-Woolworths store whose frontage was unfortunately ripped out for the insipid, corporately generic, Sainbury's branding and all the derelict homes on Suffield Rd. And the period frontages of the shops and homes along Seven Sisters road, now in the shadow of Grainger’s ghastly tower.
It will be good to see that “new vision” for this area. The Community Plan can only be a start.

NB - Please avoid at all cost anything at all similar to the horror that is the area to the west of Edmonton Green station.

Written and circulated back then -
THE RAPE OF A NEIGHBOURHOOD BY THOSE ENTRUSTED TO PROTECT IT - J.J. B 06 Feb 2011

I write this because something sinister is happening in one of London's most deprived areas. The deprivation of which I speak is economic. It is not one of spirit. People here still have their dignity, their ideals and their own community based vision of how they wish their neighbourhood to be. We don't, however, have the clout of our neighbours in the western part of the Borough, nor that of Prince Charles as exercised recently in South Kensington.

I speak of the Ward's Corner site in Seven Sisters, South Tottenham, in this vibrant and cosmopolitan part of London, where Haringey Council wants to approve the destruction of an authentic landmark building of relatively modest character, but one that is much appreciated and very much surviving, despite the adversity and years of neglect by the powers that be.

So here we are, faced with a brutal decision by Haringey Council, with the support of the Mayor of London's office and TFL, to allow Grainger plc to rip the heart out of OUR characterful high street and replace OUR covered market with an insipid steel, brick and glass multi-storey building of the type one sees blighting so many bland look-alike British high street corners and one that matches THEIR idea of regeneration. The technocrats have once again been doing their mischief.

At what price? Their scheme, as proposed for the Wards Corner site, is going forward counter to the wishes of the local community. It lacks vision and will result in the destruction of locally-owned and locally-run businesses that are present, active and unique and it will throw several livelihoods on the scrap heap, all in the name of "regeneration". They will most probably be replaced by generic multiples like Sainsbury's Local, Nando's or Boots, who can afford the rental these buildings command. They by no means add REAL value to the neighbourhood. The replacement buildings will blight the future of the High Street regeneration as laid out in the Council's own UDP.

It is so sad that it is only when things disappear that we then realise how much we valued them. I think of all the talk of rebuilding the Arch at Euston. I look at Spitalfields market and what it has become. The individuality, uniqueness in character and the opportunity for local people - people of the community, people with a vested interest in seeing things IN THEIR OWN area succeed. These will disappear overnight.

The Wards Corner development as presented by Grainger is not wanted in Seven Sisters. It is not in the best interests of the community that lives here now. Destroying a building and simply replacing it with a new one does not regeneration make.

Haringey Borough, its Councillors and MP David Lammy, need to intervene and rethink this plan before it is too late - the people of Seven Sisters demand it.

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