Rising expectations: Tapestry (the brown-ish blocks to the left in this developer CGI) is to be woven between the existing tall towers at East Croydon. But will these three towers overshadow the Fairfield Halls or add to the wind tunnel issues along George Street?
Housing correspondent BARRATT HOLMES on the latest proposals for huge towers providing expensive flats and situated close to East Croydon Station
The site next to the Fairfield Halls and Croydon College, once owned by Croydon Council through its failed house-building venture, Brick by Brick, has now had a planning application submitted which could generate hundreds of millions of pounds for the developers.
Croydon’s cash-strapped council sold the site for just £20million four years ago.
What the developers are calling “Tapestry Croydon” was better known as the College Green site, which was sold as part of the council’s initial fire-sale of assets. The site previously had planning permission for 400 homes – with a potential “retail value” of more than £100million.
In this planning application, submitted by Delta Properties, the developers want to build 676 build-to-rent homes in three towers of 16, 29 and 42 storeys (slightly taller than was suggested in their most recent consultation earlier this year), but with just 20% “affordable” homes.
That’s well below the 50% “genuinely affordable housing” that is required under the London Plan. Croydon’s Local Plan also seeks provision of 50% affordable homes in all developments of 10 units or more.
The development, according to the planning application to the council, “completes the final part of the Fairfield Masterplan after years of vacancy and inaccessibility”.
Low-ball estimate: the developers behind Tapestry claim that they cannot afford to provide any affordable homes, so they are being generous with 20%
The proposal includes a small area of public open space, to be called Arnhem Gardens, referencing Croydon’s twin town in the Netherlands, and the “Arnhem Screen” brutalist feature that accompanied the car park on the site, which was lost in the multi-storey’s demolition.
There’s to be a new east-west pedestrian link (they want to call it Hazeldean Walk), to run between the Fairfield Halls and East Croydon Station, as proposed by the Masterplan almost a decade ago.
Tapestry will be threaded in between four other, massive build-to-rent towers: Ten Degrees, Croydon’s answer to the dark towers of Mordor, and Enclave, the brighter, whiter partner site also developed for American property business Greystar. Enclave’s two blocks include Croydon’s tallest building, at 49 storeys and 489-feet tall (Ten Degrees, which when built in 2019 had a claim to be the world’s tallest prefab, is 44 floors and 446ft).
Delta Properties says that it is a British-based asset manager and developer whose “portfolio includes residential-led mixed-use regeneration projects, office buildings, retail parks, shopping malls and industrial and logistic centres”.
They say that they are developing the site on behalf of something called Croydon Developments Ltd, an Israeli-British owned company, and they describe Tapestry as “a key puzzle piece of the Fair Field Masterplan opportunity”. Hmmm.
They are taking on a site which is not entirely straightforward and which, through a series of calamitous mismanagements, was what ultimately broke Brick by Brick.
Much to hide: the Brick by Brick hoardings have been in place at College Green since 2016
The developer’s pitch for below-required volumes of “affordable” housing comes with the dangled carrot of a “12,500sqft NHS primary care facility”, which is undoubtedly much-needed locally. But it is not clear whether Croydon’s NHS either wants such a facility, or has the budget for one.
According to a financial viability assessment conducted on behalf of the developer, “The maximum viable amount of affordable housing the proposed development can provide is 0%.” So they are really doing us all a favour by even considering providing any affordable housing. They call it “a commercial decision…to provide 20% affordable housing, alongside the range of other public benefits”.
The 125 affordable homes proposed will be rented at London Living Rent levels, owned and operated by the developer across all three of the blocks, “with residents having access to all the shared amenity spaces and benefit from the same services”. So no “Poor Doors”.
London Living Rents typically range from around £1,000 to £1,400 per month for a one-bed flat, depending on the development and location.
Tapestry stitch-up: the latest proposals want to build three more tall residential towers between East Croydon and the Fairfield Halls
As well as the sky-high homes, most of which will be rented out at sky-high prices, and the 13,000sqft healthcare facility, the developers want to include space for restaurants and cafés, a nursery or creche and “upgraded cycle and pedestrian links, promoting sustainable travel”. There’s to be no car parking space provided on site.
A pre-app presentation to Croydon councillors last autumn saw a number of issues and concerns raised with the scheme – which could make George Street’s high-velocity wind tunnel seem like a mere zephyr.
The overshadowing by the towers of whatever pockets of open space are provided is another concern, as demonstrated by the perma-shadow between the blocks that were allowed to be built on the Queen’s Gardens on the other side of Park Lane.
The build-to-rent flats on offer at Tapestry will “lead to expensive luxury flats that local people cannot afford to live in”, according to one concerned councillor. One-bedroom flats in Ten Degrees start at £1,700 per month.
The negotiation now will be over how close to 340 genuinely affordable homes the council’s planning committee and Mayor of London can coerce the developers to deliver.
Read more: Council puts hotel and College Green up for sale for just £40m
Read more: Site sold by council for £20m might now be worth £200m
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Only 20% of 676 homes (which should be 135; the developers appear to be proposing 125 affordable, which is in fact 18%) will be “affordable”, so by definition, the remaining 80% will be unaffordable.
So what is the point of building those at all?!
Even our council has a 50% target of affordable homes in any development, although they didn’t come up with this number on their own because they just lifted it from the London Plan (from a more significant Mayor).
The public open space to be called Arnhem Gardens also references Arnhem Bridge, which is the newer (1994) eastbound side of the A232 bridge over the railway lines joining Barclay and Fairfield Roads. [The older (1957) westbound bridge is called Fairfield Bridge].
Depressing