Category: Regeneration

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Ealing Broadway developer Glenkerrin faces collapse

Vice Chair Eric Leach reports that according to ‘Property Week’ magazine would-be Ealing centre developer Glenkerrin is facing collapse.

Grant Thornton is expected to be appointed on 10 May as Administrators to the company’s five London properties. Irelend’s National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) is the instigator of this action. NAMA also appointed Grant Thornton as Receivers to the Irish Glenkerrin properties.

Glenkerrin bought up the existing Arcadia site and other properties immediately west of Ealing Broadway Station and proposed a retail and residential development , including a 26 storey residential block, in 2008. Ealing Council agreed to the Planning Application but the Government eventually turned it down in December 2009. WEN as part of Save Ealing Centre spoke at a Government Inquiry on the application and you can read Eric’s personal blog of the daily twists and turns of this Inquiry here).

It appears that Glenkerrin is in debt to the tune of 650 Million Euros.

WEN is not surprised at Glenkerrin’s collapse, but we are surprised that it has taken so long for it to take place.

Eric Leach

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Money wasted on meaningless pavement replacements on The Avenue

Eric Leach questions Council ‘regeneration’ on The Avenue in West Ealing.

Way back in February 2010 we reported that the Council planned to spend £280,000 on regenerating The Avenue retail strip. Over a year later workmen are taking up lots of quite serviceable paving stones from the wide pavement on the eastern side of the road and replacing them with new paving stones. This must itself be costing thousands of pounds and there is no obvious regeneration benefit here. At a time when £millions are being cut from Council budgets it seems quite obscene to spend money unnecessarily.

We still await the conversion of the mixed Stop and Shop and Pay and Display kerb side car parking arrangement into ‘free-form’ 30 minutes free parking controlled by car registration numbers. Although budgeted to cost £8,500, the new arrangement is not scheduled to increase the number of cars which will park there. These new parking slots will continue to be dominated by mini-cab car parking – an arrangement that the Ealing Broadway Councillors are quite happy to tolerate even though it works against the best interests of Avenue traders and shoppers.

What with this work underway and the conversion of The Drayton Court pub into a hotel in full swing, car parking on the Avenue is even more of a shambles than usual. When the 27 bed hotel opens in June we are promised 18 hotel car parking spaces – 6 in front of the hotel and 12 in what was part of the garden at the back. However the access road at the back via Gordon Road is terribly narrow and will be just one way.

Eric Leach

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Demolition starts at Green Man Lane Estate

Chair of WEN, David Highton reports on the beginning of the end for the Green Man Lane Estate.

Demolition began yesterday as the 10-year redevelopment of the Green Man Lane Estate  kicked off in earnest. Council leader Julian Bell was joined by representatives from housing association A2Dominion, builders Rydon, architects Conran and GML residents as the bulldozers finally moved on site. Whatever your views, and West Ealing Neighbours’ views are fully documented on our website this development marks a huge change for West Ealing. When completed the development will house some 2,000 people as compared to the curent 800. This ‘densification’  will be repeated in a year or two when the Sherwood Close Estate (aka Dean Gardens Estate) is similarly redeveloped.  Add to these two developments the 100s of new homes at Sinclair House (opposite West Ealing station), the Daniels development, the Waitrose development, the newly completed flats on the old Groveglade indoor market site and many more smaller developments and the changes are having, and will continue to have, a profound impact on West Ealing.

This policy of ‘densification’ lies at the heart of the Council’s plans for the next 15 years as detailed in their Local Development Framework. You can read more about this on our blog by clicking on the LDF category on the right hand navigation and on our website

David Highton

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21 storey tower set to dominate West Ealing centre skyline

Vice Chair of WEN Eric Leach reports on a new development in West Ealing.

Just 12 months after National Government said ‘No’ to a 26 storey residential building overlooking Haven Green, plans have been submitted for a 21 storey residential building which will overlook Walpole Park.

The plan is to demolish the old Westel/TVU mini-Centre Point lookalike building on the corner of Craven Road and the Uxbridge Road on the eastern borders of West Ealing. In its place is planned to build three new buildings – a hotel, a flats for sale block and an Affordable Rents flat block.

Continue reading “21 storey tower set to dominate West Ealing centre skyline”