The Notebook: From Fleet Street’s face lift to the Premier League cartel
Where the City’s movers and shakers get a few things off their chest. Today, it’s our editor Andy Silvester with the pen
Fleet Street’s face lift: A century-defying city transformation
One of the more appealing things I’ve received in my inbox was a computer generated image of what a ‘new’ Fleet Street could look like.
The architectural giant Gensler has been working closely with Fleet Street Quarter BID and the City of London in recent months to develop a masterplan for the area, from a massive uptick in pedestrian spaces to biodiversity increases to enhanced and more welcoming office space.
If the whole thing makes it through the planning process to fruition, it’ll be a transformative project for the area and one of the more substantive regenerations of any area in the City for more than a century.
Areas like Fleet Street are in a bit of a quandary; with Blackfriars to the east, Holborn to the north, and the west end to the (obviously) west, it risks becoming a bit of a footfall dead zone.
Getting people back there post-pandemic requires a bit more work; but to paraphrase Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, if you build it well, they will come. As people come back to the City in greater numbers than the sceptics believed, it’s vital that the momentum to rethink and regenerate London’s public spaces continues.
There is ample work being done in the centre of our city, where big projects tend to be more easily accepted as just part of the evolution of daily life.It’s more difficult in places like Croydon or Sutton or Brent, which are just as much in need of constant and thoughtful regeneration.
Ensuring the sort of new thinking being seen on Fleet Street happens in those areas will be vital to the post-pandemic recovery of our city at large.
Cartel clash stranglehold
It would appear that Premier League clubs remain unable to agree on how much cash they should redistribute down the pyramid to smaller clubs – who, by the way, do a load of the heavy lifting of producing the next generation of talented players and fans at the local level.
This paper isn’t usually a fan of intervention but the football regulator cannot come soon enough to bust up what looks ever more like a cartel.
This paper isn’t usually a fan of intervention but the football regulator cannot come soon enough to bust up what looks ever more like a cartel.
The unexpected joys of a London staycation
Back in the west end, meanwhile, a new arrival in Soho will only add to the area’s vibrancy. The new Broadwick Soho hotel – situated, unsurprisingly, on Broadwick Street – features 57 uniquely designed rooms, a brilliant rooftop bar named Flute as well as a stunning basement Italian, Dear Jackie.
My partner and I were invited last week and had a blast waking up in Soho – and in such a brilliant hotel, too. I’ve always loved Soho, and have happy memories of painting the town red in my student days. I’m a little older now, alas, but the energy and buzz of the place remains the same – and what a treat it is to have the place almost to yourself having stayed the night at the Broadwick. I can’t recommend a London
staycation enough.
Bercow’s portrait
I was most amused to see that John Bercow’s portrait in Parliament has a nameplate deliberately left blank, awaiting his ennoblement in the House of Lords. It remains, of course, blank. Ah well.
BBC’s Blue Box documentary review
One cannot move at the moment for book of the year lists so I won’t bother with that for now – perhaps next week. Instead, a documentary on BBC iplayer are well worth your time, especially in the current context of another tragic loss of life in the Middle East.
Blue Box tells the story of the Jewish National Fund’s crowdfunder – to use a modern term – to buy up land in the then-Palestine Mandate before World War II, and the war of independence that followed in the 1940s. The context – of a people buying up land because they weren’t welcome in anybody else’s – runs through today’s Middle East like the words on a stick of rock.