London’s derelict docks getting modern facelift

Press, 21 October 1983, Page 22

London’s derelict docks getting modern facelift

From

DIANA DEKKER

in London

The serious purpose of some of the cranes towering above London’s old docklands is not to lift and shift They are there as sculptures — an attempt to keep human proportions in a vast area where regeneration is at full speed. Nine square miles of the old docklands have become derelict. As they are being transformed into areas of settlement and industry, planners worry about the overwhelming effect of the scale of the operation on the people they are trying to attract to the area — Londoners used to narrow streets and cluttered skylines. The docklands had two very serious blows before their dereliction. For years symbols of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, they became targets for German bombs in the Second World War. “The Germans did a very poor job,” says Bob Mellish, a former Labour M.P. for Bermondsey and Rotherhithe, and now vicechairman of the London Docklands Development Corporation (L.D.D.C.). “They never stopped the shipping but they destroyed the houses around. “In contrast, the Allies utterly destroyed the German docking industry, and when they rebuilt it after the war we were not competitive any more. The ' German docks, and the Dutch docks at Rotterdam, are so good that they jusficould not be compared. ‘;This daft, old, one-eyed country just went on operating with its old docks.”

Even 20 years ago the London docks were well into their decline. The advent of containerisation and the removal of shipping from the capital to the container port of Tillery on the Thames rang the

death knell for the area. From 1966 to 1976, 100,000 jobs were lost on the wharves. Bob Mellish, known as “the dockers’ M.P.,” found he had no dockers and no docks. The “renaissance” of the designated 5000 acres of the area, stretching north and south of the river Thames, is the responsibility of the L.D.D.C., formed by the Government in 1981 and intending to complete the transformation of the site within 10 to 15 years. Expenditure has already been immense. The L.D.D.C.’s second annual report, put before Parliament in July, shows that £75 million ($l7O million) has been spent on land acquisition and treatment, various forms of support for the community and industry promotion, consultancies, and administration.

More than $5O million has been spent on infrastructural projects in the last year. The L.D.D.C. is not fussy about who invests in the area. Nearly 100 corporate and private projects have got underway in the last two years and they are by no means all British. Much Arabian money has come into in London’s old docklands already and L.DJD.C. officials have been to every continent in the world — except Australasia — selling the benefits of investing in an area only a few miles from the heart of London.

“We’re not saying that because it’s British land and a British outfit, that no foreigners are allowed in,” Bob Mellish says.

“A big Dutch company, for example, is investing in a large housing site to build 400 houses. The Dutch proposals are so much better than ours, so different and so exciting. The Dutch have the money but not the space. The scheme is based on Dutch money. “We want foreign investors with private money. We have people from Hong Kong and the Far East Some Japanese companies have shown an interest in moving here.” Already the, area has attracted the eye of newspaper king Rupert Murdoch, who is to site a multimillion dollar printing plant at Wapping, and the “Daily Telegraph,” which has confirmed a plan to spend $136 million on a printing plant despite having lost £l7 million over the last three years. British Telecom International is to build an Earth satellite station close to the old King George V dock. The station will have two, 43ft diameter dishes, will be London’s first, and will come into operation early next year. The docklands’ “enterprise zone,” to lure industry to the area, was designated in 1982 and comprises 482 acres of land and water for development. The L.D.D.C. boasts that rent and rates combined for prime office space in the zone are less than 16 per cent of the office space costs in the city. Businesses are wooed by being exempt from local rates for commercial and industrial properties for the next 10 years, and by having a 100 per cent allowance for

corporation and income tax purposes for capital expenditure on industrial and commercial construction. There is a simplified planning regime and exemption from development tax.

Housing is springing up all over the area — but at a cost. Fifty-two thousand dollars will buy a terraced-house with a living-dining-kitchen room downstairs and two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, altogether less than 500 square feet.

More than 9000 new homes are expected to go up on the docklands in the next five years. When the L.D.D.C. was formed in 1981 there were 14,727 households within the designated area, of which 82.5 per cent were publicly owned, 11.8 per cent privately rented, and 5.4 per cent in private ownership. The L.D.D.C.’s aim is to balance the mixture of housing.

Ambitious plans have been discussed for the 450 acres of inland waterway, formerly the anchorages for ocean-going vessels, to become leisure areas for sailing, other sports, and possibly the mooring of historic vessels.

A new light railway (rapid transit) system is to be built to provide high frequency connections to underground and British Rail, and an airport for short take-off and landing aircraft, is proposed in the Royal group of docks. ,Bob Mellish is not afraid that Government help might dwindle in the future.

“Of course there will be arguments about funding. We’ll just go on with our projects and see what happens. We are the jewel in this crown.”