New flats planned for Book Place shop site in Greenwich
Plans have been submitted to demolish another former pub building in Greenwich. This time it’s the building that became the curious and quirky Greenwich Book Place. The oft-missed Greenwich Phantom covered the owner’s fight with developers back in 2011. He won that round, but this application suggests things have since changed.
The adjacent development is almost complete. It’s a Family Mosaic scheme named “The Gramercy”. Here’s a photo taken a couple of weeks ago:
Sandwiched in between these developments stands the attractive Lord Hood pub beside Up the Creek Comedy Club. Plans for the pub’s demolition were approved earlier this year.
And finally, another pub in Greenwich is to be brought down imminently. The Old Loyal Britons on Thames Street will be coming down for more flats.
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The planning reference to view the plans for Greenwich Book Place’s demolition and rebuild is 16/3328/F
Hope there will be plenty of groundfloor/underground parking incorporated into these 2 new developments, as the current parking situation in the vicinity is dire. Hey RBG Planning Officials – please listen!!
Typical example where the campaigners have achieved the opposite effect of what they aimed to do.
Claiming that the new developments are ‘out of character’, they stood strong in a near-inhabitable boxes, obstructing new houses being built for others. The single tree in a grass-field next to it was so called irreplaceable nature treasure etc etc. Now the new developments are nearly finished and the fight can’t be won any longer. Apparently loose-loose was more preferable to win-loose, now a new developer will come and build on the 2 other pieces of land. Instead of having one well thought-through development we can only hope that the new developer will build something aesthetically pleasing, in line with the other one.
thanks for posting about this. People shouldn’t take the demolition for granted. Whoever designed the existing building, did so with Greenwich in mind. There are many little touches that echo the early Georgian houses on Crooms Hill. Whereas the proposed apartment blocks could have landed straight from any uninspired suburb. Don’t hope for more car spaces, Londonwolf – this is a car-free development. In any case, plenty of people will fight to save this lovely old building.
The developers do need this to pass through quickly. The apartments are low on amenity spaces, and only really have those balconies. But it looks likely that balconies on traffic-jammed, polluted streets like this one might be trickier to get through planning before long, due to imminent air pollution measures. Let’s hope so, anyways.
Thank you ever so for you article post.Really thank you! Keep writing.
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The book place is on a tiny site, so I am assuming that it’s redevelopment will go hand in hand with the vacant land behind the blue hording. It’s such a shame that a lovely building couldn’t be saved and remodelled into modern accommodation behind a distinctive facade. I expect that permission would not be granted to squeeze in the tiny units that modern housebuilders are throwing up all over the place.
Have to admit I’ve only just seen this article.
Just to inform you that Mr Herbert, the owner of Greenwich Book Place and Gallery who had stopped the developers from building on that whole stretch of Creek Road up to the Bardsley Lane/Creek Road junction, died in July 2015, and his partner sold the building.
The shop finally closed on 29th August 2016.