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The 'REGENERATION' of SE1 and SE17 *(see also JAM TOMORROW!)
What's Going On In Our Neighbourhood?

now you can email us your thoughts, gossip, news, error corrections, leaked documents, moans, support and criticism:
elephantnotes@yahoo.co.uk

WANTED!! Info on latest situation with the Aylesbury regeneration
We haven't been writing about the Aylesbury as we don't know much about it.
If you want to send us an email with thoughts, comments, new, that would be great!

Site Last Updated!! April 7th 2009- Apologies for lack of updates, been busy! (Sept 09)

The view from the Infoshop**(see below for "Where we are coming from' )
Over the last few years, a load of new residential housing has been put up in the newly attractive London Borough of Southwark. It started with luxury lofts and apartments being built in the new supposed 'cultural quarter' of Bankside where the Tate Modern and Globe Theatre had arrived in the 1990's. The next area to be 'up and coming' was The Borough, where the trendy foodie Borough Market brought in pioneer homebuyers and developers. After the luxury flats market set the trend for our previously unfashionable and always snubbed part of London, the volume housing developers (like Wimpey or Countryside) came in on the act to throw up acres of cheaply built but expensive housing. Now, after, nearly a decade of development, Walworth, one of the poorest areas in England has seen the first arrival of a yuppie housing market. Not only has this impacted on the local area, with vacant spaces being built on for new oddly-coloured buildings, but the sale and market in ex-council houses has gone through the roof: £270,000 for a flat on The Pullens Estate (at it's peak June 2007) where the Infoshop is located. The high prices are maintained by the forthcoming myth/reality of the massive 'regeneration' of the Elephant and Castle area. This slow moving plans seeks to knock down the shopping centre and the Heygate Estate and replace it with a mega complex of hotels, retail developments and hundreds of new private houses and blocks. Along the way, a required percentage of social housing will be factored in. Essentially, what is planned is to change the local demographic from one of poor people and the type of shops and services these people need to a landscape and culture of more better-off people and the mega shops and service industries they require. Without this change, no-one will invest their money in big shops, hotels and private leisure facilities in The Elephant.

Metro Central Heights - Heygate Estate - Unite Building

The Regeneration of Elephant + Castle and Walworth 1990 - Present Day

METRO CENTRAL HEIGHTS
• The first yuppie development was the rejigging of the old DHSS building that looms above the Northern roundabout at the Elephant around 1999. Designed by Erno Goldfinger, this brutal concrete bohemoth is listed to preserve it for the Nation! At the end of the 90's it was developed as Metro Central Heights, a gated community of first time buyers and more affluent types, the first wave of urban pioneers that came to live in 'edgy, sexy, vibrant' Elephant, as it was marketed at the time. You can see the crazy promotional brochure here. You'll notice how much they go on about how secure it is. Metro Central Heights – 2 bedroom for $340,000 (November 2007)

UNITE BUILDING
The Unite development was built on Walworth Rd opposite the Heygate Estate around 2004. Sold on the basis of it being a development for 'key workers', it ended up primarily as a student dorm for local colleges. It's a good example of the goldrush mentality developing round here where any piece of land, ruined building or landmark is being speculated on in the run-up to fabled massive 'regeneration'.

EARLY DEVELOPMENTS IN WALWORTH SE17
The earliest redevelopments happened around 1999 / 2000 and were concentrated on the extreme eastern edge of Walworth close to the New Kent Rd. The run-down Georgian terrace that fronted New Kent Rd at Balfour St was re-jigged alongside with an added community of 8 faux C18th townhouses behind. This was probably the first gated new build to arrive in Walworth. Nearby, the old Geoffrey Chaucer school annexe on Searles Rd was converted by Sapcote Real Lofts into the gated The Paragon faux-lofts development. A 2 bedroom flat there now goes for £480,000. Another Paragon flat with garden goes for £750,000 (Oct 2008). Round the corner, The Globe pub in Darwin St was converted into 6 flats. Before the real E+C goldrush, these and other nearby streets of Victorian terrace housing were the first to be bought cheap by newcomers to the area.

Telephone Exchange flats - Sutherland Chapel flats - The demolished Giraffe site - The Duke of Clarence flats

The next developments around Walworth were on Liverpool Grove with the conversion of the old Telephone Exchange by Kingfisher into posher flats (£395,000 for a flat in 2005, £415,000 in Oct 2008). Also the old Sutherland Chapel around 1999/2000. At the same time local pubs began to give in to the madness. The Queens Head on Amelia St was closed and re-jigged into a hotel, Southwark Council being keen to grant planning applications to hotel developments to cater for the knock-on increase in tourism from the Tate Modern and other sundry entertainments. The Giraffe on Manor Place was closed in 1999 and later knocked down. Despite some promises of planning gain by a proposed new development, nothing has happened there. It remains today a half-derelict shell, speculating on it’s future land value perhaps? The Duke of Clarence further up Manor Place was similarly closed in this first wave of smaller private developments, reinventing itself as the Duke of Clarence Yard residences in 2005 – ‘7 luxury apartments, 3 luxury penthouses…bringing colour to life’. Last time we looked, life outside the flats was still very much in colour to our eyes.

Other locals lost over time have been the conversions of The Faunce in Faunce St, The Victory in Barlow St, The Duke of York in Bagshot St, The Station Tavern in John Ruskin St and the long-closed The Archduke Charles in Rodney Place, only recently demolished in 2007 to create a prospective building site. This site is now listed as a ‘Development For Sale’, asking price £1,500,00 (Oct 2008). The Station Tavern in John Ruskin St was demolished in 2002 and a new apartment block opened in 2004.

Intergalactic Arts Studios, a community arts space at 31 Morecombe St, was evicted around 2000 with demolition following the next year. More fake Georgian townhouses were opened on the site in 2002. The old Silverthorne Secondary School building on Albany Rd was converted to yuppie lofts by 2003. A 2 bedroom ‘apartment’ there is priced at £360,000 (Oct 2008). The blurb is hilarious putting the property in residential Camberwell although it’s in Walworth. They also say that it’s just off Old Kent Rd. It is but a long way off, no?. The nearest transport, they say, being Peckham Rye train station and Kennington Tube i.e not very near!

Gated Townhouses, New Kent Rd - Silverthorne Lofts - Charlotte Court - Archduke Charles site - Driscoll Hse site

In The Guardian’s ‘Let’s Move To’ column of October 2003, prospective buyers into Walworth could expect to find ‘Sarf of the river – Fruit ‘n’ Veg ‘n’ Diamond Geezers’ who were ‘full of beans’. The bad side of what one might face was that it was ‘not on tube or rail’, you would have to ‘hunt hard for good schools’ and there were ‘localised patches of high crime’. The benefits however were the cheap to buy Victorian terraces – ‘it’s not very glam but just look at the prices’. Those tempted to live among us however should ‘steer clear of the estates: cheap but not good investments’. Around 2006, the long closed-down Cop Shop on Carter Street was finally shabbily redone as expensive flats. Handy though if you want a Doner from the close-by kebab shop.

An empty warehouse at 40 Merrow St (subject to arson) in 2002 was then redeveloped as 5 ‘townhouses’ with a block of 9 flats behind as Balmoral Court and Spectrum Place. East Gate Developments Ltd have recently completed a ‘secure gated development’ of 13 ‘luxury’ flats for rent on Flint St, nr East St. The basis of this is a converted coach house and a new 3 storey building. Two other Walworth sites now sit vacant and prone for redevelopment. The industrial premises of The Lift & Hoist Co at Merrow St / Queens Row that we had photographed a long time ago. Surely it could not be long before it was demolished and new residential was put up? As we speak, a fence that now boards off the site reads ‘Telford Homes’, one the companies behind the massive residential new builds around the Stratford Olympics site and also 2 new schemes at Queens Rd, Peckham. Planning was put in for the creation of ’14 self-contained flats’ of 1, 2 and 3 bedrooms. This was recently refused on architectural technicalities presumably. Round the corner on Horsley St sits Church Army Housing Ltd’s two empty blocks, each block sealed off with security grills for 2 years or more now.

Morecombe St IGA site and new townhouses - Merrow St Old and New townhouses - Merrow St Lift & Hoist Co. development site

Flint St development - Station Tavern before and after - Horsley St empty flats

Other large more recent conversions on New Kent Rd are the Charlotte Court re-jig on and the forthcoming ex-hotel Driscoll House revamp by Oracle Homes.


HEYGATE ESTATE
The famous Heygate Estate is massive concrete warren and reaches from Walworth Rd to New Kent Rd, containing 1100 homes. Standing on prime development land, the Heygate tenants had been previously victorious in slowing down the gentrification of the area by insisiting on a good deal when the Estate is knocked down as one of the first moves necessary to get the development ball rolling (swinging?). In March 2002, the three-way negotiation between the council, developers (Southwark Land Regeneration) and local tenants resulted in the council and developers scrapping the deal as they couldn't agree on who would get what share of the profits. Result? Three million pounds lost by the developers and shedloads of money wasted by the council. At that time, a ballot of Heygate tenants overwhelmingly said they wished to keep the Council as their landlord, their tenancies being more secure and cheaper than often unaccountable Housing Associations. Realising that the tenants wielded the ultimate voice on whether the 'regeneration' would begin, the new Liberal Democrat council decided to blackmail the tenants into either accepting new Housing Association buildings in the Heygate area or being moved outside of Walworth if they wanted to stay with the Council.

October 2008: With Lend Lease (a consortium of Lend Lease, Oakmayne and First Base) named as the responsible developers for a newer re-jigged regeneration scheme, the decanting of Heygate tenants into non-existant Housing Association new builds has been a right vicious debacle. Three years after the ‘New Homes for Heygate Tenants’ plans were approved, only one planning application has been submitted out of a promised 16 new Housing Association-run blocks. This is to be built at Comus Place / Townsend St site. Dave Ware, Regeneration Team Project Director, said at a Walworth Community Council meeting ‘I can only apologise and say that this was more difficult than we appreciated’.

The one new build to come from the regeneration, Garland Court on Wansey St, opened in 2006 with some decanted Heygate tenants. The award-winning scheme comprises ‘31 flats…with 12 affordable rented flats, 7 in shared ownership and 7 privately owned’. That’s makes how many council tenancies? The Council’s 16 chosen sites are for ‘mixed-tenure’ anyway – ‘that means there will be some for social rent (approximately 50%), the remainder for sale on the open market’. (One For Sale March 2008 - £227,299)
With the clearing of the estate due by September 2009 and the completion date for 1000 new homes being 2011, we wonder how many more lame apologies the regenerators might be forced to make for their despicable treatment of their paying tenants?
We wonder then how Heygate tenants might feel when they read that the Council spent more than £65,000 on three staff parties at the trendy Vinopolis winebar near Borough Market, one of these being for the benefit of the Regeneration Dept officials.

Council tenants are now being asked to find homes themselves through the Council's Homesearch waiting list and bidding scheme. Needless to say the available properties are thin on the ground (especially for people who wish to remain in Walworth). The Council has begun to issue eviction notices to tenants with the threat of getting the boot hanging over the head of those who fail to find their own Council place or refuse any offer the Council makes.

(NOVEMBER 2008) 400 families are left on the estate and nearly 80 have had eviction proceedings begun against them.

Two residents had this to say to the South London Press in March 2008, the original deadline for finding homes – ‘Southwark must remove the threat of issuing notice of evictions to seek possession, remove the six-month time to finding a home through the Homesearch and build the replacement homes on early housing sites before demolishing the estate’.

‘Happiness gurus to descend on Heygate’ reports the SLP on October 7th 2008. Yes, it’s true, the Council with it’s infinite tact is paying The Happiness Project £2000 to train Heygate tenants ‘to be happier and less stressed’. The project’s motto is ‘Success is a state of mind; happiness is a way of travelling; love is your true power’. We suggest the Council adopts this as the new Borough motto. In this way the non-appearance of flats for the decant tenants can merely be seen as a state of mind and not the shameful scandal it is. Ernie Hart from Heygate said ‘All they need to do to stop tenants feeling anxious is to talk to us and give us what we need. What we want is very simple: to move into a nice new home that is decorated with no fuss. We just want to be treated properly, we don’t need therapists’.

CHANGES:
Joyce Cundle – a resident at The Elephant for 42 years quoted from ‘My Elephant’: ‘What changes have you seen over the years?
I have seen many – not all for the good. The sheer volume of new high rise flats and buildings have corroded the friendliness around here. I know it is impossible to avoid building new homes but the buildings should be more broken up and not so many high rises close together…When I was a child if you were ill neighbours would take care of you, now we don’t even know each other.

What do you think of the regeneration plans?
…I feel sorry for the residents of the estates that are being knocked down who will have to leave the Elephant and Castle. With so many new people coming to live here it will force a lot of people out…’
Source? ‘Quarter’ #4 Spring / Summer 2008 ‘the official regeneration magazine for the Elephant and Castle produced by Southwark Council and its development partners Lend Lease’. 45,000 copies distributed locally with the wise words of Joyce.

Five of the Sixteen Housing Schemes Announced:
(Oct 2008) Five planning applications have been sent in to Southwark Planning regarding new houses for decanted Heygate tenants and, of course, private buyers. (Not sure of the ratio of HA to Private as yet!). The shemes are under the orbit of London & Quadrant Housing Association. The sites for the new builds will be Brandon St (18 homes), Library St (40 homes), New Kent Rd (52 homes), Townsend St (37 homes) and St George’s Rd (15 homes). The plans for Townsend St and St George's Rd are pretty good and homely homes. Metaphorm Architects, responsible for the new blocks at Brandon and Library St are also designers of a ridiculously ugly three colour tower block proposed to be built on top of the parade of community shops on Rodney Rd / Stead St. It's worth checking their project pictures (Go to 'Residential' link) on their website to see the kind of people they either think already live here, or worse, will move into the new developments. Let's say that the pictures aren't as diverse as the community that's already here. Another bizarrre feature of the proposed developments for new housing around the Rodney Rd area is the destruction of part of the recently renovated Nursery Row park there. Re-opened with new trees and plants, pathways and street furniture in September 2007 after the Council spent £300,000 on it, it now seems like large parts of it including the 15 year old community orchard will be concreted over for new housing. Not a very good example of what Management types call 'joined-up thinking'.

• MARCH 2009: A new "Elephant & Castle Regeneration Charter for Community Inclusion and a Better Quality of Life for All" has been launched by local people and businesses. The opening paragraphs read:

"We, the communities and traders of the Elephant and Castle, are being excluded from the multi-billion-pound regeneration being led by Southwark Council.

The redevelopment of the core area is subject to a private deal with Lend Lease, who are drawing up the masterplan for the area. No information on the masterplan and none of its details has been given to us since the Development Framework of 2004.
Meanwhile, the council is building “Early Housing” developments on our much needed open space, green space & play areas, as well as removing our local amenity shops, garages, residents’ parking spaces and other community facilities and substantially reducing levels of daylight for many residents.

Three quarters of the homes in these new developments will not be for the Heygate Tenants, despite this being an explicit rationale for their inclusion in the Southwark Plan, but for private sale. We believe that the regeneration process must be fair, just, and socially inclusive, and must provide for affordable housing and a better quality of life for all current and future residents of the area".

Read the full Amenity Charter here

WALWORTH: The big developments
Since 2006, several bigger projects were begun around the top end of Walworth Road. Crampton St in Walworth (where 56a Infoshop) is located, has now undergone yuppiefication. Oakmayne Properties has built 2 large developments in the area, the dumbly named South Central East and O-Central. South Central East is ‘secure gated community’. O-Central isn’t gated. To aid good cheer to local residents, the first thing they did was to cut down trees, remove the local phone and Post Box! Grafitti appeared a few days after the theft of local amenities: 'What happened to our phone boxes? Dem they got taken! Greedy Developer Bastards'.

• Here you can see the yuppie fortress of South Central East risen beyond the train tracks near the Infoshop. ‘The Elephant starts here. Cool pads from £249,995’ says Oakmayne . Get out ya wallets - South Central East, London SE17 Only £415,000, 2 bedroom apartment (Sept 2006). NOW: 2 bedroom flat in South Central East up for rent at £425 per month.

• Oakmayne Properties advertising wheeze for the South Central East flats was to put up an advert on the Walworth Rd that read 'If you want to make real money, invest in The Elephant'. Stuck to the poster was 300+ fivers which local people then ripped off in a frenzy. This crass 80's Thatcherite money-madness is probably the last thing local people in The Elephant need. A few crumbs from the table and the continuing myth that the development will aid local people. Next you can see the architect's plan for O-Central on Crampton St. As you can see it recreates not a 'historic tree lined boulevard' that never was, but a large building that blocks rare and precious daylight from the council's Pullens Estate. What has ended up on Crampton St is not a set of buildings that sits well with the tenement flats of The Pullens but cheaply built wood-panelled buildings.

The topping out ceremony for the Crampton St flats was undertaken by England and Chelsea skipper John Terry who announced on TV that he had begun purchasing a portfolio of properties in the area. The private block (83 Crampton St!) now rents for £350 per week for a two-bedroom (Oct 2008). Alongside the Penthouse flats overlooking three local council estates are corporate rentals, buy-to-lets and private buys. The social housing blocks barely merit any architectural finery at all. Eventually the offices at the bottom of the all blocks may open up. So far, they are still mainly empty, awaiting business tenents. The last two pictures show the difference in the yuppie flats (niceglass Juliet balconies) and the Housing Association blocks (grim steel grill balconies).

Oakmayne tells us local residents - 'Elephant & Castle is now definitely on the map. The regeneration has now started'. It's always been in our A-Z though!

ELEPHANT and WALWORTH: The even bigger developments
The official Southwark regeneration site features a handy map of recent property speculation and development. Coming soon to our wonderful area :


- Strata Tower (on top of the old Castello's pizzeria), a 43 storey eco-tower with 408 homes (30% 'affordable') now underway. A 30% share of a one bedroom flat is quoted at £70,000. (Oct 2008)

- 360-London (on the demolished London Park Hotel site), another 44 storey tower with 470 residential units ('affordable' units now scaled back to 30%). Site cleared ready for start of works. The whole development was backed by the Government regeneration agency English Partnerships who had bought the site for $18 million with the express intention of developing affordable homes for key workers. It is these units that have taken the biggest hit with 43 keyworker homes knocked out in the new plan. Social housing is marginally increased from 29 to 35 homes. Private homes will now increase from 282 to 319 units. The Council, who sold part of the site to English Partnerships, commented that ‘a lot of money has gone round in a big circle and the net losers will be the people who need help the most. This ‘dreadful irony’, as they put it, will not be lost on regular readers of this page.


- Printworks (on the old HMSO printing works Amelia St) 168 flats. Under way now.

- Vantage (next to Metro Central Heights), 68 flats of which 20 are Housing Association. Under construction. Despite, the Vantage building still being built, plenty of flats are now on the open market having been bought as investment buy-to-sell (at profit). A 2 bedroom on the 7th floor is up for £335,000. Another flat on the 4th floor is offered for £339,000 as an ‘opportunity for investment’. So a flat can be bought before it even exists to be sold at profit to a new buyer who will then sell again for another profit (and so on?). In the old days, houses were for living in. Will anyone ever live in this flat or will it just go round and round in some buy/sell cycle? Still, with the credit crunch on, will anyone be profiting from what must have seem like a shrewd investment at the time? All this hyped on the back of the forthcoming E+C regeneration makeover. Yet you can still read the following in another ad for a Vantage up for sale: ‘The property is located close to the Elephant and Castle which is the subject of an innovative regeneration scheme’. No wonder a lot of early new buyers to the area are now complaining about the whole thing. Fascinating insights on the E+C new property markets can be gained from reading posts to the 'In Se1 Forum' - See here for Vantage or here for Strata.

Vantage building in progress - CPO carshow rooms - Oakmayne Plaza optimism - Oakmayne Plaza empty site

OAKMAYNE PLAZA?
Above we can see the results of the Compulsory Purchase Order that closed the H. R Owen's car business to make way for the Oakmayne Plaza (at New Kent Rd by The Coronet), a mega-development 250-room student accommodation, five-screen cinema, 312 private residences, restaurants and shops and market square. This project has been up shit creek recently. Despite a completion date of early 2011, nothing has been happening on this empty site, apart from some public art (natch!). The Council's Quarter magazine from Autumn 2007 reports that 'construction work has started on Oakmayne Plaza'. Wishful thinking surely!

• URBAN PIONEERS RIDE INTO TOWN?
New buyers into the posher private housing (like Metro Central Heights), often portrayed as ‘the pioneers’, are sometimes a little bit guilty of making out that they are ‘opening up’ a new part of London as if thousands of people already living in the area have not had their own organic fabric of a community. It seems like the thousands of poor people in poor housing that sits cheek-by-jowl to redevelopment zones are often made invisible in the new shiny plans. This kind of forced invisibility is particularly strong around The Elephant but even stronger around the ridiculous makeover of Bermondsey St into a consumer-driven new playground for the more affluent newcomers. The Telegraph article ‘Property Investment? Time to pack your trunk?’ from November 2007 sums up this mentality – ‘One of London’s unloveliest areas has become its newest hotspot, with investors snapping up off-plan opportunities…ugly old concrete buildings coming down and gleaming new ones going up…’. Estate agent Carl Davenport is quoted ‘The E+C may not look like much now but it is an area on the move which means it’s the right time to invest. Once all the new buildings start to appear it will be too late and buyers will have missed the boat’. Is the ‘regeneration’ of the area then simply a place to invest and profit from an over-inflated housing market or is it a scheme to develop renewal for all of the local population, old and new? First rung flats on the property ladder, Buy-To-Lets, corporate rentals – none of these add anything to the already existing community. In fact, in places they can make it worse as the temporary tenants are often ignorant, arrogant or inconsiderate about the older local inhabitants. This isn’t to say that all newcomers to the area are like this or, in fact, that all the poorer old-timers are angels. It’s just worth pointing out that the ideology of supposed mixed-development often assumes council housing as the bad with the new private houses and new shops as the good. However, people with hardly any money relate to the local area in a totally different way to those who money is often no worry.
None of this denies that where we have lived for a long time isn’t perfect. Far from it, it’s often harsh and unrelenting but at least it’s somewhere that’s been lived and grown according to the more simple needs of people and not pure individual or corporate profit. Community is not something you can consume, it’s something more common and human than that.

CREDIT CRUNCHING TIMES
In these credit crunching times – will the regenerative programme follow it’s time-table? So far, the promised demolition of the unpopular E+C subways by early 2008 is well overdue. It’s interesting that, as before with the first failed E+C scheme, all the new developments still use the line ‘situated in the Elephant & Castle £1.5 billion regeneration area’ to entice newcomers to a promised up and coming area.
The 360-London tower block (that’s waiting to be built on the old London Park Hotel site) has already seen developers First Base being given permission by the Council to reduce it’s commitment to including affordable homes to keep the scheme ‘viable’. First to go were the ‘range of flats earmarked for keyworkers’ that the Council’s Quarter magazine had boasted about in Spring 2007. We wonder if other developments locally will try for the same. Printworks at Amelia St has promised 42% affordable housing for keyworkers and social rent.

AFFORDABLE?
It’s worth pointing out that Rd in the last three years Housing Association new builds have opened at Watling House, New Kent Rd, and nearby on Munton Rd. In Townsend St, Tower Homes built two apartment blocks for keyworkers. Although welcome as attempts to build more social housing locally, these still fall into a contradictionary non-profit status of H.A’s or the grey area of whether Part-Buy and ‘keyworker’ deals are genuinely affordable or welcome as ways of increasing cheaper housing for all.

 WALWORTH READY FOR NEW INHABITANTS:
• www.findaproperty.co.uk - Property for sale in London SE17: Hectic would be a good word for SE17...
'...The strong working class element to the district has prevented gentrification in an area that geographically would make it a prime candidate. Compensation for being the planners' guinea pig is the community spirit which puts most of the rest of London to shame. There are seemingly violent mixes of housing in SE17. Unexplained survivals from Georgian times meet partial Victorian terraces and in their lee are low and high rise flats and the full panoply of post war varieties. The effect is not charming as in Forest Hill to the south and the small scale tactical plans obviously had no time or money for a strategic appreciation of how the whole would appear...Between Walworth Road and Old Kent Road we have the Sixties/Seventies brutalist paradises of the Heygate Estate by the Elephant and the Aylesbury Estate by Burgess Park. The Aylesbury has been saved from full scale demolition but much of it will still go. The Heygate was due to be completely wiped off the face of the earth but the collapse of the Elephant & Castle regeneration plan in 2002 will have put such ambitious schemes in jeopardy....New life is flickering here in the conversion of a school, a pub, some new housing and the rebuild of 68 Victorian terraces with all mod cons...SE17 is obviously proving the hardest nut to crack for gentrification. Even the East End is succumbing faster, and if Walworth falls then nowhere can be immune. The upside to all this is to find perhaps the last sizeable chunk of inner London that is still fairly cheap, and first-time buyers, on to a good thing here, will have a whale of a time hunting through this fascinating area'.

• onionbag blogger Thursday 29 April, 2004
'The Aylesbury Estate in Walworth is a contradiction of style and sorrow. There is beauty to be found in the thirty year old blocks, and then with the disappearance of the sun behind a cloud, the old estate emerges as a much murkier proposition. Covering the size of a small town, the Aylesbury is symbolic for giving Blair a bloody nose with local democracy standing up to grandiose Whitehall planning. Mr Tony chose the Aylesbury as a platform to launch his Social Exclusion speech shortly after the '97 election. Seven years later and the estate is still standing, even looking liking to outlast Tony, Tony, Tony...Back in '99 the proposal was to completely demolish the 2,700 homes on the estate and build new private sector managed accommodation, 1,300 of which would be sold off for profit. That's a bit like the landlord in your local pushing past you and causing you to smash your pint glass on the floor, and then he has the cheek to charge you for a new one. The residents were given the choice of allowing the private sector to rip up their protected local authority contracts (and allow big business to provide half the service at twice the cost), or carry on building their own community without fat cat interference. The 70% NO vote back in 2002 proudly told the private sector to piss off back to the City - a euphoric rejection of New Labour's flagship 'Third Way' regeneration programme.

Housing 10,000 people on a site that is only half a mile from the pinstripes of the City of London, the Aylesbury remains the largest estate in Europe. Bolted together by a series of bridges and walkways, the landscape around Walworth is forever changing and provides you with a new perspective with every turn...Despite the recent upsurge in celebrating the local community, Walworth is ripe for gentrification. With the bulldozers now not moving in, it is only a matter of time before the Bright Young Things from the City enclave around SE17. Old school buildings are already being converted into loft space. Google Aylesbury and a page of poxy Estate Agents are thrown up. Transport may stave off the takeover though; without a tube connection from some shitty Soho lifestyle bar, the upwardly mobile remain ironically stranded. You may be able to read a tube map Tallulah, but I bet you'd be lost trying to get your pretty little airhead around the fine art of planning a South London bus journey across town'.

• Monopoly Money Regeneration?
The Elephant and Castle now appears on the expanded edition of the property speculation game Monopoly. As with the famous Old Kent Rd, the Elephant square costs 60 quid. A quick game of the new edition was played on the floor of the shopping centre in Spring 2008 between the then Executive member for regeneration Richard Thomas, Major Projects director Stephan McDonald and two local residents Anne and Jade. It was reported that although proud to be on the map the players would contact the company in a few years time ‘to get the square shifted from the cheapest brown colour to the more up-market green or blue’. Quoted from Quarter #4 Spring /Summer 2008.

• Snippets from the streets:

'LUXURY FLAT' on Walworth Rd / 'Luxury Flat' on Walworth Rd /'Luxury Flat' on Walworth Rd / Picture of the 'luxury flat'!

These days we regularly see signs for ‘Luxury Flats’, mainly conversions above the shops on the main drag or tucked down side streets. And so this classic - a penthouse at 263-65 Walworth Rd above Factory Stock Clothing Warehouse? 'Only minutes from The City!'. Or the cheaper one bedroom flat £225 per week. Nice


‘Luxury’ 2 bedroom flat on Merrow St going for £290,000 (Oct 2008). Looking out of this window, you can see the three golden balls of the pawnbrokers that you live above attached to your new flat.

• ELEFEST 2006, a festival that celebrates cultural diversity in The Elephant, now in it's third or fourth year and sponsored (in part) by Oakmayne Properties (see above). Surely some mistake?!!
• ELEFEST 2007, a festival that celebrates cultural diversity in The Elephant, now in it's fourth or fifth year and sponsored (in part) by Oakmayne Properties (see above). Surely a continuing mistake?!!
ELEFEST 2008 etc etc.

• COULD THERE BE SOME CONNECTION between the ever expanding GOLFRATE PROPERTY management of a dozen or more of the shops on Walworth Rd and the recent closure of many local shops? Golfrate is 'one of the fastest growing private property companies in the UK' looking 'to double its Greater London property portfolio to £2bn over the next five years'. It started out in the 1980's with two shops in Deptford. Over the past two years, long-standing local businesses have closed due to higher rents being imposed upon them by their agents. It's also likely that places like Subway, Holland & Barrett, Paddy Power who are willing and able to pay higher rents for their stores, will add to the spiral of rent increases, closure and more chains arriving.

• COMINGS AND GOINGS ON WALLY RD
October 2008: New to open on Walworth Rd: A brand new Tesco Express that replaces Fads DIY store. Another bookies replaces the old Kings Head pub at Manor Place. The friendly Hindu family-run photographic shop, closed because the landlord raised their rent by tons, is being turned into a Credit shop – loans against wages etc. Wimpy has shut, as has the family-run Stationary shop. If the infamous Walworth Surplus Stores shop goes then it’s definitely all over! We are taking bets on who will be the first coffee-chain to open in The Elephant area.

Tlon Books, The Shopping Centre and St Modwen
• June 2008: Trouble and strife in the Elephant Shopping Centre. Two interesting notices are on the door of TLON, the secondhand bookshop on the ground floor. The first reads 'SOUTHWARK COUNCIL REGENERATION PLANS - Elephant + Castle Tenants 1965 - 2009 - Hard Working Honest Working Class People Killed Off By Southwark Council' bemoaning the shabby treatment and shaky promises made to Shopping Centre businesses by the Council. The other notice is a re-possession of this popular bookshop by St Modwen's, the owner of the Centre. It's a tragedy to see Marek's shop locked up, his entire book stock padlocked inside. The bookshop had already been closed down and the premises re-possessed in January 2007 for a few weeks. Happily, two weeks later, it was open again. At that time, Marek wrote: ‘Basically this is a regeneration problem. In the last 5 years, income has gone down badly, as local offices have closed and flats emptied. The area has become blighted, and the demolitions have commenced. The Council has repeatedly pledged to keep the small businesses in the shopping centre going but done little of substance. In the meantime, most of my costs and especially the rent have gone up or stayed the same. The result is obvious and the same problem faces all the traders in the Centre to some extent. If something is to be done about this then the Council and the landlords need to be persuaded to be more accommodating’.

Oct 2008: The doors are still padlocked but the stock has gone. Interestingly the 'SOUTHWARK COUNCIL REGENERATION' posters that were in various shopfronts in the Centre are no longer on display anywhere!

By the way, St Modwen Properties, part owners of the Shopping Centre since 2002 (the other half is owned by Kuwati company Salhia Real Estate), is undergoing its own crisis. The company, which specialises in town centre / shopping centre ‘regeneration’ for both ‘short-term benefits’ and ‘longer-term more significant regeneration’, are finding that value of its property portfolio is being rapidly undermined by a deteriorating UK property market. St Modwen shares have gone down more than 40% in the last year. (Oct 2008). We wonder what sort of knock-on this will have to smaller local traders still gritting their teeth and hanging on in The Centre but also what sort of deal they can make on the Shopping Centre during it’s presumed (but no longer definite!) sale and demolition.



MORE ON LEND LEASE
Lend Lease is the development corporation building the giant £1 billion Olympic Village complex in Stratford. In October 2008. In October 2008, Lend Lease admitted that it could ‘no longer finance the scheme’ and it was possible that the Government could step in to bail it out from taxpayers money instead of the much-heralded privately funded intiative profit scam that it always was. Lend Lease’s net income fell 47% last year with the company writing down it’s UK assets for the third year in a row.

Lend Lease‘s Team Vision for our area includes the following: ‘Elephant & Castle is both literally and metaphorically on the fringe. We like this. Things outside the ordinary happen here’. Can anyone translate this for us please?

THE FINE ART OF REGENERATION
Sometimes we wonder why communities undergoing regeneration often see a surge of public and privately-funded artworks springing up as part of completed office blocks or, more likely, on transitional sites of development. One blessing, at least, is the death of 1980’s Public Art that represented a nostalgic look back at the hard workers of the past as if the hard workers of today are non-existent. Sculptures of stevedores, warehousemen, navvies etc. is what we call like to call ‘muscular heritage’. Instead, what we have seen locally has been ‘Seizure’ by Roger Hiorns at Harper Rd and the Stag by Ben Long at Elephant Rd. Stag was part sponsored by Oakmayne. Long-term local boy Reuben Powell’s (Artist-in-Residence at the Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre) new-ish gallery on the second floor of the Shopping Centre is much more contradictory. Working with some Regeneration sponsorship, Powell creates quite beautiful large-scale charcoal drawings of the demolition and construction of the area, a record of the changes that neither affirms or denies this process but merely aestheticises it for consumption, and sale. Nigel Hugill, chairman of Lend Lease, sponsor of an earlier exhibition alongside Oakmayne and Lend Lease, said "Reuben has a unique style and his project is a good example of how art can meaningfully capture the area's changing face for future generations to enjoy'.

Most of this public (or fairly public) art says little about the process of knocking down and building up of the developing E+C area. Like most art these days, public art, lacking any possible powerful resonance, is usually contained entirely within wacky, curious or flashy technical parameters saying very little to anyone who may be interested in a culture that asks questions of who we are, where we live and what and why we do things. A good example of this pointlessness is Ben Long saying of his Stag: 'With this project, my ambition has been to make an iconic artwork which functions as a surprising and integral part of people’s daily lives. It is my intention to create artworks that engage with people who might otherwise have little or no involvement in the visual arts'. Wot, people like us? Cheeky bugger!

Public art seems to be something added into the regeneration process as another tick of the box. Peter Logan's pointless and ugly ‘Arrows and Obelisk’ outside Tescos on Old Kent Rd. It's not even unique - he put another one exactly the same at a shopping centre in Cambridge in 1996). 'Swordfish Masquerade' by Sokari Douglas Camp at the 81 Hanover Park keyworker development, Peckham is also a bit ugly. Is there any reason they are there? At least the mysterious Henry Moore sculpture on the Brandon Estate does more for us artistically than the execrable ‘Monument to the Unknown Artist’ by Greyworld recently inflicted upon the public on Sumner St. This eyesore was commissioned by giant property developers Land Securities for this site, as was the banal 'Poured Lines' by Ian Davenport up on Southwark St. How much longer before we get out own Anthony Gormley sculpture to sanctify a newly regenerated Elephant + Castle?

These temporary spectacles don’t really enhance or give much to the local community in the way that some bunce money can often be argued out of tight-fisted developers for some local trees and benches or redecorating a community centre etc. Public art, which can seem at first sight to be a generous gift, often really works as best an advert for an up and coming area. Without writing an essay worthy of the length of ‘War and Peace’, we would say that a dubious set of supposed values often accompanies the imposition of ‘culture’ into local areas in the form of public art.

Luckily in The Elephant we not seen the creation of a facile urban patriotism such as the ‘I LOVE PECKHAM’ strategy. Such weird alliances of artists, small shop-keepers and local people deny that the interests of all are never one and the same. These kind of displays of ‘simple images, emotive and celebratory and a love of consumption’ mask the reality that at the bottom of any regeneration process is a very real class division. Put simply, this means the continuing poverty and the marginalistion of the existence and concerns of that poorer community. With that in mind, we can already see that after the collapse of the first attempted Elephant regeneration scheme, the Council scaled back it’s commitment to local inquiry and consultation when they saw that residents often gave them answers other than the ones they wanted. Marginalisation means a consultation paper with two boxes to tick:
Lots of regeneration (2) Even more regeneration.

Questions concerning the merits of such a process are never asked of people. That would be to question entirely the business-led model of regeneration. Corporate Investors like Oakmayne or St Modwen do not invest in people. They invest in brick and concrete for profit. What would a local people-centered regeneration look-like? Similarly, what would a genuine public art look like? Probably like this!!!

ST MARY NEWINGTON CHURCHYARD OPEN SPACE and THE OLD ROWTON HOUSE

• St Mary Newington park right by the Elephant was one place of desolate semi-tranquility where there was nothing but roses, trees and grass. It was nothing special but was strangely special. The Council reckons it attracted 'anti-social behaviour'. All we saw were dog walkers, picnicing locals, frisbee players and psychogeographers all seeming to be enjoying this pagan land quite so socially. After a grant from the London Development Agency, the former open-space has been rejigged into something a bit more colourful. There's a nice kids play area but some awful orange belisha beacons and b+w stone balls on the grass area. Enjoyment of the space seems more or less no different from before. Community wardens still go there and take notes on anti-social behaviour.

• No1 Churchyard Row, Walworth SE17 aka The Rowton House. This Victorian working mans hostel sat next to St Mary Newington gardens was demolished in late 2007 to clear the land for the erection of 360-London aka yuppie flats. Almost beautiful (esp. before the original cupolas were removed in the 1970's), this building added much to the area for those who have lived here a long time. The new photo adds in a poetic accident for those inclined to such moments.

OTHER RANDOM LOCAL DEVELOPMENTS:
Large site development site Southwark Bridge Rd. Here you can see a pretty plan of what we call 'their dream, our nightmare'. The plan features zero cars and very few people but lots of pastel shades and classy glass construction. The other development is called 'The Wireworks' and is on Great Suffolk St, next door to the first pictured site. It's another development by our friends Oakmayne Properties. The penthouses on the top cost half a million. Not bad for a grungy street in backwaters Elephant. The famous sign in the middle has obviously stopped working.

TO BE CONTINUED...

*see also - Jam Tomorrow! Some history and notes on the regeneration and gentrification of North Southwark + Bermondsey (Part One: 1900 - 1987)

**Where we are coming from:
If we seem particularly negative about things, it’s not because we think regeneration is always a bad thing. It’s just seems to us that it’s always a bad thing when local people’s needs are only superficially understood and cared about. What happens when local people are ridden over roughshod can easily be demonstrated: Take a look back at the ‘regeneration’ of Covent Garden, Wapping, Spitalfields, Shoreditch, Hoxton and take a look at what’s going on now in Hackney and Dalston. These have been disastrous for local people who only want decent council housing and a decent local community.

Regeneration and gentrification are two subtle different but interlinked processes. Regeneration is always sold to us with the myth of the trickle-down theory of wealth creation. It’s supposed to be in our interest as something might come our way. But what might come is always only mere crumbs from the table of those with the power and the money. Regeneration is often a forced and false consensus rather than a genuine public debate. Gentrification is never in our interest as it’s the displacement of the original poorer inhabitants by wealthier ones. The results of this switch is always evictions for us, closure of local shops and amenities and deterioration of the communal life that is the lifeblood of us all. Where regeneration crosses over with gentrification is where the replacement of council estates with new mixed residential buildings results in a decrease in local social housing as land is sold off to private developers for profit.

We don’t think it’s wrong to demand that a regeneration scheme enhances the quality of our lives. We don’t think it’s wrong to oppose gentrification. In this way it turns out that our negativity is really only a mask for our positive wish for all of us to live our lives free from those who pretend to act in our interests but are only ever about giving even more of what we’ve got away to those who already have too much.

Photographic Exhibition at 56a INFOSHOP held from September 2005 to March 2006

International Dis/Appearance SANTIAGO, Chile + WALWORTH, London The process of erasure and closure is at work in both Santiago, Chile and Walworth in London (and everywhere else too it seems?) Decay, psychic anchors, historical ruins and the sense of community life in local space is demolished overnight. What buildings, grafitti, secrets, shops, dark alleys keep life in your neighbourhood bearable?

What happens when these happy references are removed form the landscape? As if by magic, without reference to you, to what is or what has been, towers of 'luxury' flats spring up overnight. The only reference is money. When money arrives, you depart. This dual photographic exhibition (pictures from Santiago and Walworth) documents a personal take on scrubbing the city clean, against the myths and hypes of regeneration and gentrification.

having fun today dear? not really no!

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