Sainsbury’s plan 1500 homes by future New Cross Gate Bakerloo line station
Developers Mount Anvil and Sainsbury’s have been consulting on building up to 1500 homes on the site of Sainsbury’s next to New Cross Gate station.
The current site consists of a retail barn that opened in 1996 and extensive car parks. It’s ripe for redevelopment and providing much needed new homes beside the existing Southern and London Overground station before the Bakerloo is extended.
Earlier plans for 400 homes have been dropped for higher density which makes sense on such a large and important site.
One issue is these homes would start appearing up to six years before the Bakerloo extension appears. Can Southern and London Overground cope? The latest passenger figures show New Cross Gate saw a 10% passenger increase from 6 in 2015/16 to 6.6 million in 2016/17. That is a rise from 4.3 million since 2014/15.
Taking 12 years to build a four station tube extension is pretty pitiful.
Moving the station
The plans challenge TfL designs to locate a future station on the site. Sainsbury’s and Mount Anvil want to move a future station over the other side of the existing station and bring the store closer to New Cross Road.
Building high density housing by transport hubs is the way forward, providing infrastructure investment keeps up, though it raises questions as to why a low-density Sainsbury’s supermarket was constructed at Cross Quarter almost directly next to Abbey Wood Crossrail station.
More information can be found here.
