Haringey Heartlands – Reasons to be concerned!

There have been recent posts on this Forum expressing concerns about the likely loss of the historic gasholders on the Heartlands site. Quite right too, but there are other and bigger issues of concern about this proposed scheme. This scheme would be an eyesore prominently in view from Whiteman Road looking north, and would have a seriously negative impact on the transport and other infrastructure aspects in the surrounding areas of Harringay, Wood Green and Noel Park.   

 

See below for the latest post under the heading “Calls to save Wood Green gasholder …”

 

There is more to this than saving the gasholder, worthy as that would be. The Haringey Heartlands planning proposal that is now open for consultation is a very mediocre scheme that fails to do justice to Wood Green and turns its back on real opportunities to do something with more imagination and sensitivity.

 

At the Planning Development Forum in May there were serious criticisms of the scheme from irate local residents – these included:

 

• The proposed 1000 new residential units is too many on this small site hemed in by the railway and Shopping City
• There would be a net loss of jobs through the closure of  the existing real and viable businesses on Coburg Road
• Inadequate provision of children’s play space – said to be below the Council’s minimum standards
• Approximately 2000 new residents to move in with no improvements to the  infrastructure infastructure
• Proponents of the scheme claim there are good transport links – bus, tube and rail when in fact these services are already overloaded.

 

The present scheme can be seen almost as a parody of mindless housing developments from an earlier era. It consists of a series of eight, nine and ten storey blocks mostly arranged in two lines either side of the spine road. For sure it is dressed up to be environmentally friendly and there is a bit of PR puff for a new small public square, but in reality it is a high density residential development designed to generate maximum return for National Grid, which is the private company that acquired all the land assets from the old British Gas.

 

A more imaginative and less profit-driven scheme would have done something to respect the cultural, historic and social context of the site. It could have included reuse of the outer frame of the gasholder to house some community related facility and reopening the Moselle stream that runs in a culvert under the site and making this a feature of the scheme. Wood Green and surrounding areas deserve something much better than what is now on offer.