Almacantar, the developer who bought Centre Point, for what in today’s world sounds like the bargain price of £120 million, have announced an exciting plan which will open up a ground-level piazza & courtyard as large as Covent Garden, topped by 82 (no doubt high-priced) flats.
There’s a way to go before the plan can be implemented, including getting planning permission with the added hurdle of the constraints on what is a Grade 2 listed building, though in this case that could confer the valuable monetary benefit of limiting any future development in the surrounding area which could interfere with the enviable views enjoyed by those who live in the flats.
Meanwhile another of London’s icons of modern architecture has also run into financial trouble. Richard Rogers post-modern inside-out building is home to the insurers Lloyds of London but owned by Commerz Real Fonds who paid £231 million for it 2005 with the aid of £141 million securitised loan on which they are now in default.
Although, again in today’s climate, one might expect there to be no shortage of wealthy foreign investors keen to buy high-status & valuable commercial property in the City, the protracted, uncertain & expensive process of getting approval for any necessary or potentially profitable refurbishment or remodelling of what is a Grade 1 listed building could be a deterrent.
On last week’s In Business on Radio 4, Peter Day visited firms in what remains of the Lancashire textile industry to learn how they are adapting to cope in today’s world. Leigh Spinners are still in business, but say that they are handicapped by not being able to sell their existing 100-year old mill in order to finance a move to modern premises – because it has been listed Grade 2*. So capital lies tied up in a building which is only half in use.
Decisions about which buildings should be listed are made by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport on the advice of English Heritage.
Although Listed status is often quoted as a highly desirable feature in adverts of houses for sale it is effectively a form of nationalisation, a take over of other people’s property by those with a certain kind of aesthetic sensibility, which they value above housing & jobs, locking up private capital.
By coincidence, after the above was written, I had reason to consult Volume 1 of Richard Crossman’s Diaries of a Cabinet Minister on a completely unrelated matter, when I cam upon an entry for May 1966 when Crossman was Minister for Housing & Local Government.
This records a meeting with Duncan Sandys ‘an odd mixture – passionate European, hard-headed Tory, a founder of the Civic Trust’ who had won first place in the ballot for Private Members bills. Between them they drew up what became the Civic Amenities Act of 1967 which greatly increased the powers of government to ensure that Listed Buildings were preserved – saved from demolition or alteration.
This desire to cling on to the past knows no bounds to Right or Left.
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