I first visited the Kings Cross development two years ago. And was invited again last night. Whereas it all seemed a bit of a dream then, it’s not a dream any more. Here some numbers to drop the jaw if you’re seing them for the first time….
-This sixty-seven acre site (above) north of Kings Cross is the biggest contiguous bit of brownfield land to be available for development in London (and probably in any major European city?) for a hundred and fifty years.
–Two billion pounds has gone into developing existing projects in the immediate environs, and a further one billion is committed. This is re-generation big-time.
-The plans for the site include twenty new streets, ten new public spaces and eight million square feet of mixed use space. It’s like a new town around London’s main transport hub.
-The University of the Arts will move into an iconic new building in a listed shell, which is on schedule for delivery in September two thousand and eleven
-Tenant Sainsbury has committed to take three hundred thousand square feet.
-Getting the Kings Cross development off the ground is multi-dimensional chess. At one time , Roger Madelin, co-CEO of Argent told me, he was having negotiations where he needed to align no fewer than thirteen different transport consultants with differing loyalties and agendas.
And yes. There will definitely be jazz. You heard it here first.
Categories: miscellaneous
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