Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Haringey's Warehouse Districts Under Threat?
An item at tonight's Council Cabinet meeting has thrown into question the future survival of Haringey's two warehouse districts and the artistic communities who live in them.
Both the Harringay Warehouse District and the Fountayne Road community now face an uncertain future following the publication of a Haringey Council report, "Tackling Unauthorised Living in Industrial Areas". (Report attached)
The report, which was discussed at the full cabinet of the Council today, recommends a two-year project costing £600,000 which will seek to deal with "the growing problem of unauthorised residential and live work uses in and around (the) Industrial Sites" in Haringey. The recommended process is "to establish a special multi-disciplinary team to fully investigate and address the problem through a combination of regulation, improvement, enforcement and, where necessary, prosecution".
The alarm bells were ringing for me since earlier in the week I had discovered that these areas are earmarked as being amongst those that will "will accommodate the majority of development in the borough over the next 20 years".
In Facebook and Twitter conversations this afternoon, warehouse residents shared their fears that the vibrancy their communities bring to the borough will be overlooked and their communities sanitised and destroyed.
In response to my Twitter requests to Council Leader Claire Kober this evening to protect these communities, Cllr Kober sought to offer some reassurance:
@harringayonline some people in unacceptable conditions. My concern is for safe, decent properties. No intention to undermine communities
@harringayonline no intention to damage what's good. Priority is to go after rogue landlords just as we do elsewhere in borough
When I asked if she would ensure that warehouse residents will be involved, the Council Leader replied:
@harringayonline don't see any problem involving residents. Will ask officers to consider how best to achieve
I very much hope that the approach the Council takes in this project will support these communities rather than beginning the process of whittling them away.
Tags for Forum Posts: local plan, local plan 2014, site allocation plan, warehouse district
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Permalink Reply by Abi on
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Please don't think that this particular view is representative of most of us non warehouse folk in the area, Brian. Surprised that comment wasn't picked up on earlier actually.
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Bit judgemental. Would like to know what you do for a living before you criticise other people's choices, Jenny. Is it massively beneficial to society and/or your neighbourhood? If so, we'll talk!
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Permalink Reply by ingo pless on
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Tried Tris.. too expensive ie residential income far tops gallery coin for any warehouse, we (www.comuniart.com) put stuff out into other venues and are hoping to launch a gallery very soon.
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Under threat of compliance investigation Hugh, as in fact any structure in any community is.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Can I urge people living in Seven Sisters ward to make sure they and their friends and neighbours are on the Electoral Register. And as soon as possible. I don't know the closing date for May's elections, but a new updated Register is currently being prepared.
Whatever people's views on development and other local issues, it's vital that there's far wider public discussion about the options. The borough elections give an opportunity to open this up.
Nobody will be surprised when I say that I'll be supporting principled Labour candidates who have a moral compass, speak truth to power, and back socialist policies. Thin on the ground though they appear to be.
But whatever people's view, it's important that there's proper discussion about the merits (or not) of all the various candidates.
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor)
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Permalink Reply by jenny on
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Its about time the council did some thing about the disgusting eye sore I have to look at everyday as I live in Hernmitage road.These so called 'Arty' poeple need to move on so as the eyesore can be bulldozed to enable new houses to be built-I am sick and tired of the noise/parties/over flowing bins/rubbish dumped from this facotry.A buzzing community it isnt, an invasion of privacy more like.
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Permalink Reply by Tom Jubert on
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Hi all. I'd like to chime into this conversation to offer a perspective from inside Arena Design Centre, where I've been living and working for almost 4 years. I make video games for a living, which is just one of the odd, creative disciplines that's managed to find an accepting home in the Harringay Warehouses.
First I'd like to explain my experience of the general safety and upkeep of these warehouses. They do vary radically. Some are done up like modern flats and charge over £700 per person per month. Others have curtains for walls and come in at under £500. Our own unit is somewhere in the middle, and right now our landlord is frantically bringing it up to specification so that if the council decides to evict us in order to develop new flats or somesuch it will have to find some other reason to do so.
I would agree with the commentator above who objected to unscrupulous landlords renting dangerous properties to tenants like us who don't have an awful lot of options within budget. That is precisely what has been happening in Arena, and in principle I am happy to see things changing. This being said, I find it quite depressing that there seems to be no viable way to bring these warehouses up to code without sacrificing what makes them so wonderful - the industrial feel and the space - in order to install a bunch of corridors that actually make navigating and exiting the building rather more torturous.
In terms of cleanliness, I would say that no warehouse I've visited is any worse than most of the student accommodation I lived in in my teens. Sure, we make a few sacrifices that perhaps we shouldn't have to, but I think we are all agreed that they are worth it for us. We are not here to try and make the area into a rubbish tip.
On the topic of rubbish, the problem there as someone has already noted is that the council doesn't provide us with the basic sanitation services that we need (eg not enough recycling bins). I realise that this is precisely because these warehouses were designed for industrial use and re-purposed by us, but at the same time for as long as the council holds off from evicting us I think this particular problem could be easily solved by providing the warehouse residents with a sensible number of bins. Basic things like this are why we are made by the council and the landlords to feel like second-class citizens.
On the topic of parties upsetting families with noise and unsocial behaviour I completely understand reactions, and join you in condemning those who engage in it. Our unit doesn't throw parties since we almost got evicted a few years ago, and since then we have received no complaints. Other parties do happen, we hear the music through the walls, and in general we adopt a fairly liberal attitude towards it - but that is not to say everyone should have to put up with it. All I'd ask is that the entire Harringay Warehouses community doesn't get tarred with the same brush. The truth is that a number of solutions to that problem have been proposed internally, including a the middleman-landlords approaching Mr Schulem (the chap who owns Arena) and proposing that he take on a security guard for weekends who could quieten down parties before anyone had to complain about them. It sounds draconian, but if it enables us to live peacefully with our neighbors then I personally am for it. Of course, Mr Schulem didn't want to spend any extra money on that.
Finally, I'd like to address directly criticisms that the 'vibrancy' with which these warehouses are advertised is purely marketing spin. I realise that not all angles on our warehouses are flattering, and that some of the people who visit some of the parties do nothing but ketamin and big fish, little fish. At the same time I have never in all my life lived in a community that felt as close as this one. People come here because they want to be exposed to and to live different ways of life. I am worlds apart from the ultra-hippies who live in the warehouse opposite us, professionally and philosophically; but I feel happy and comfortable living here because I know everyone here is open, liberal and has their own ideas about what matters that they are just dying to share with the world.
So, to those of you who welcome council plans to redevelop our homes, I understand why we haven't earned your respect yet, but I hope you may reconsider, because what we have here is in my opinion really very special. Comments like "Get proper jobs instead of pretending to be ARTY" are just factually inaccurate and somewhat bigoted. "Stop being arseholes when you're drunk" would be a more reasoned demand.
To those of you who have expressed their support for the warehouses, thank you. The state of politics in the country terrifies me, and the thought that a bunch of young, productive and, in some cases, vulnerable people can be evicted from their homes in order to build new, more expensive ones for the sort of people that the council thinks do deserve to live here is well representative of what scares me.
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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Agree with your points about keeping the warehouses Tom. Most new build is of boring design & poorly built. Destroying old buildings that have character and can be better adapted to suit residential needs (warehouse living or otherwise) is more sensible to my mind. If the council's answer is to build more of the same (as in Tottenham Hale) then that would certainly be very bad news.
It's good to see some parts of the 'warehouse' community connecting up with the surrounding neighbourhood.
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Agreed - are we not allowed to argue for keeping the warehouses simply because it's less boring, uninspiring and downright depressing than the likely alternative? That's pretty much my view. It was just so refreshing to see a few younger, more creative people appear in the neighbourhood when this started a couple of years ago. I'd like to see them branch out a bit more into the local community, I agree with Sharon et. al. on that one. But in an area that, let's face it, is not completely thriving in other ways, we need all the energy and creativity here we can get. More so on my side of the Warehouses than on the Harringay side, I might add.
I'm sure the council could work to get the landlords of the buildings up to an 'acceptable' standard - get council tax banding established, make sure people are on the electoral role, sort out rubbish collections, arrange for safety inspections and follow up with advice, etc. But as usual they are just after profit, and will probably replace these spaces with faceless and BORING new builds.
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