The battle for Smithfield Market is heating up. Here’s what you need to know
As the day of public inquiry into the redevelopment the western end of Smithfield Market approaches, both sides – developer and multi-billion pound investment management firm Henderson on one side and SAVE Britain’s Heritage on the other – are gearing up with their respective arguments for and against Henderson’s proposed scheme.
Here is a brief update on where things stand:
The market site
The site at the western end of Smithfield Market, which Henderson have coined the Smithfield Quarter, includes the 150-year-old General Market, the neighbouring triangular Fish Market and Red House cold store, which have lain derelict for over twenty years.
A sense of deja vu
At a public hearing in 2007/8, plans by the site’s previous owner Thornfield that would have seen all the old market buildings knocked down and replaced with office blocks were rejected. Thornfield went into administration and the assets were bought by Henderson in 2010 on behalf of Canadian sovereign wealth fund FREP Holdings Canada.
Henderson’s scheme
Unlike the 2007 scheme Henderson claims that its £160m plans, drawn up by architect John McAslan over three years and revealed in 2012, would retain and restore “as much of the Victorian fabric as possible”. It also argues that they are the only realistic and financially viable plans that can bring the historic site back into use.
The plans, which were called in by secretary of state Eric Pickles in September last year, are backed by London Mayor Boris Johnson, English Heritage, the City of London and the Smithfield Market Tenants’ Association.
Local Conversative MP, Mark Field has also made representations to the secretary of state on behalf of Henderson.
The opponents
SAVE Britain’s Heritage, the conservation group, and the Victorian Society claim that Henderson’s plans “to gut” the buildings and replace them with offices and shops would destroy the heritage character of the site. Instead the group wants the site to be reopened as a retail market modelled on those at Covent Garden and Spitalfields.
It is submitting its own alternative scheme at the public inquiry designed by London architect John Burrell. Eric Reynolds, the entrepreneur who runs Borough Market and five others, is offering to invest £28m in converting the General Market and Fish Market as public markets and to pay £700,000 a year in rent to the City.
On Friday Labour’s Parliamentary Candidate for the Cities of London and Westminster, Nik Slingsby, threw his weight behind SAVE and the Victorian Society’s planning application:
“Their scheme would preserve the Victorian heritage of the market while creating an urban centre of food markets, restaurants and cafes [run by Eric Reynold’s Urban Space Management]. This is an exciting and historically sensitive alternative to Henderson’s radical redevelopment of the market into office blocks.”
The group have also tried to enlist the support of the Prince of Wales, according to evidence submitted to the public inquiry, which kicks off next week on 11 February.