1 Blackfriars Road [Beetham Tower/Jumeirah Hotel]

Nihil_Dicit wrote:

...and get rid of the weeds.
;-)

You could do all that beneath the tree line.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3121/2581453558_506d568037_b.jpg

good news at last and common sense prevails...now if only we could guarantee the money for the construction!

Surely this is the key

• "agrees that the proposals would help to provide a coherent location for economic clusters of related activities and act as a catalyst for regeneration"

I came to the South bank 15 years ago. It was considered an odd choice by my friends. It was dead, scruffy, no shops. no restaurants, scary, no lighting etc. And there has been a gradual climb upwards. Partly tourism, the Eye, the Globe, the wobbly bridge, but also partly commercial. The arrival of the TFL building by Southwark Station has enormously increased the foot traffic along the Cut, talk to the shop keepers.

These towers have the potential to carry on that process. Not guaranteed I grant you. But better than a series of bomb sites which is what they look like now.

Does anyone know the marginal employment potential of these developments?

It is just i do not have the aversion to tall buldings that some on this site have. Nor do I have the worship of skyscrapers that some others have.

Nihil_Dicit wrote:

The sooner something gets built on this site the better. The massive hole on Blackfriars Rd has been sitting unoccupied for years now - such a waste.

It wasn't the reactionary forces of English Heritage that made the site owners pull down functioning refurbished office space that could have brought in several years more rental income.

The only reason the site is empty is because the then owners, who IIRC had full planning consent for the earlier Norman Foster "lollipop" scheme, realised that they could potentially make a shed-load more money because of the speculative boom then raging.

So they put together an application for a development almost three times the size of the lollipop, in the knowledge that the then Mayor would at least let then get away with something twice the size which would be seen as a modest scaled-down compromise.

Lang Rabbie wrote:

Nihil_Dicit wrote:

The sooner something gets built on this site the better. The massive hole on Blackfriars Rd has been sitting unoccupied for years now - such a waste.

It wasn't the reactionary forces of English Heritage that made the site owners pull down functioning refurbished office space that could have brought in several years more rental income.

The only reason the site is empty is because the then owners, who IIRC had full planning consent for the earlier Norman Foster "lollipop" scheme, realised that they could potentially make a shed-load more money because of the speculative boom then raging.

So they put together an application for a development almost three times the size of the lollipop, in the knowledge that the then Mayor would at least let then get away with something twice the size which would be seen as a modest scaled-down compromise.

Hmmm the architecture of the credit crunch.
It a shame the government just wants to wind the clock back to what it was like before and just continue rather than take a new direction.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3121/2581453558_506d568037_b.jpg

mickysalt wrote:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3121/2581453558_506d568037_b.jpg

Why do you keep posting that same image over and over again?

wjfox2004 wrote:

mickysalt wrote:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3121/2581453558_506d568037_b.jpg

Why do you keep posting that same image over and over again?

I took that picture form the centre of the promenade under The Rose window of the great Hall at Alexandra palace , it shows exactly how height restrictions have protected views of st Paul's

And you can see where the Beethem tower will be seen above the tree line,

Also, I have done lots of google searches and I have been unable to find any other pictures of st Paul's from that location.

And it shows exactly what you don't want very one to think ,
That there are views of St Pauls worth protecting

but aren't you only protecting the view from Alexandra Palace? From everywhere else in london presumably that view was compromised decades ago?

And now that we have that picture, can't we allow progress to march on?

But what some of us are asking is whether "progress" is really represented by building taller and taller buildings?

I suspect that future generations will prize houses (not flats) that are not tall, and will think we're all mad for trying to build so high.

I want to live in a neighbourhood which has a mixture of building types and styles with a diversity of neighbours. Why would a family or retired person want to live 23 storeys up with no easy access to a garden or green space?