Abbey Wood tower to commence this year
A tower near Abbey Wood station will finally kick off in earnest over coming months after years of delay.
Developer HUB announced the start date on social media today. There will be 245 homes on site when complete. Lorries will be rolling in to assist construction just as expensive public realm work using light-coloured materials for the road surface completes. Eek.
Earlier plans for an extremely drab tower were thankfully replaced with something a little less one-tone grey.
The development has commercial space located at street level.
There will be 28 car parking spaces for 245 flats. The proximity of Crossrail is a major factor. One concern is many people parking on the nearby Abbey Wood estate.
Parking enforcement has been out-sourced to a private company named Wing Security who aren’t, shall we say, the best. Poor parking is often dire now let alone before this is built. That contract also gives Greenwich Council no income from fines.
Slow building
Progress on this development is another example of just how slow building can be in this country and why the UK is miles behind housebuilding targets.
The site was part of Cross Quarter which was approved six and a half years ago. Sainsbury’s opened by 2015 with a small number of homes. A promised library never opened (which made sense given proximity to a Peabody library planned in Thamesmead) but work on the existing library has also yet to begin.
This tower site lay empty after Sainsburys opened in 2015 – as does another large plot of land due to be used as Cross Quarter Part 2.
Even with London’s population rising by 100,000 a year since 2013 many sites are moving forward extremely slowly. It’ll likely be over 10 years after approval that Cross Quarter 2 finishes to the north of Sainsburys in Abbey Wood.
The developers are calling it Abbey Place, Greenwich. Another re-branding exercise. Don’t give me any rubbish about it technically being accurate due to the location in the borough of Greenwich as we all know developers are trying to whitewash the location to market the site.
Many in the area have yet to see much tangible change from Crossrail except a lot of roadworks. Local residents will certainly notice this. Abbey Wood will change massively in coming years. Thamesmead is already being rebuilt after years of delay. That will now cross the borough boundary with greater force.
The planning process in this Country and in Greenwich Borough in particular is awfully slow at the moment. With many existing empty buildings left empty for years before being given permission to be refurbished or redeveloped.
Many developers also leave sites they have purchased empty for years and years in some cases.before starting building works, However this is down to the developers themselves and not the Council. We need to see developments started soon after planning permission granted for these sites.
The housing crisis will continue to get worse as the population continues to grow year on year. London’s population alone grows by over 100,000 a year. Most developments include very few properties at affordable rents putting more pressure on the social housing sector.
The UK population growth in the UK is a major contributer to tthe Housing Crisis. Big cities in the UK will not be able to cope with huge population growth .In London alone the population is already growing by over 100,000 per year as mentioned by Murky.
At this rate cities like London will run out of space to build new homes. We will need to build new towns like we did after the war to deal with the housing crisis back then to house people. Otherwise the housing crisis will just carry on getting worse throughout the UK.
Agree totally with your ccomments CDT, This why new towns like Milton Keynes, Welwyn Garden City and Basildon were built.
Milton Keynes is still half realised (a bit like Thamesmead) and has much potential with a grid system in the centre offering the chance of building many new homes with a major rail station nearby. It’s one reason for HS2 – freeing up existing line for many more commuter traffic allowing mass house building
Thanks for the update Murky. I am probably one of the few people that feel the HS2 should still go ahead so Towns like Milton Keynes can then reach there full potential with many new homes and new local and national rail links.
I also believe Thamesmead still has a lot of potential for new homes and would benefit from a rail or DLR Station and improvements to make a bigger town centre with a new cinema and improvements to local amenities.