The £50m proposal – to redevelop the gateway to Chinatown in London’s West End – has all the hallmarks of a bloody planning battle.
The site – a 1980s red-brick block fronting Charing Cross Road, WC2 – is home to 28 small and outmoded shops.
Its landlord and would-be developer, Rosewheel – the development arm of Dome underbidder Robert Bourne – is determined to transform the unloved building into the pearl of London’s Chinese cultural centre. But equally determined to obstruct him is UK Chinese rights group Min Quan, which has a track record for challenging government policies towards immigrant workers, most recently over the Morecambe Bay tragedy.
Caught between the two is Westminster city council, which also happens to own the site freehold. This has fuelled Min Quan’s fears of a conspiracy to evict the local community. Its ability to play on such fears has, to date, given the Chinese civil rights group the edge in this very public battle.
The pagoda on Newport Place and the Chinese grocery shops that act as its backdrop are covered in banners and posters: “Save Chinatown from developer Rosewheel”; “No to demolition of Feng Shui Pagoda”.
Vociferous opponents
On 22 November, the Guardian entered the fray, running the headline, “Development casts shadow on Chinatown”; two days later, Min Quan told the Evening Standard that Rosewheel’s plans “would kill Chinatown”.
Not surprisingly, the developer is feeling bruised. Until now, Bourne has kept tightlipped about the proposals, save to issue assurances that Rosewheel wants to “maintain the atmosphere of Chinatown”. Managing director Richard Bowen says he’s been surprised by the nature of the criticism. “What we’re proposing has been so fundamentally misrepresented,” he claims. But now that the opponents have had their say, Bowen has decided that it is time to break the silence.
Rosewheel bought the commercial part of the block — the Sandringham Building — 18 months ago from Hong Kong investor Gold Face for £25m. Westminster had sold it in 1996 for £12.6m, keeping the housing above.
The redevelopment is planned in two phases, the second of which still requires consent. The first phase involves major internal works to the block to which Westminster, in its role as freeholder, agreed in May. Of the existing 28 shops, which total 40,000 sq ft, 17 will be ripped out and reconfigured. Major internal works will pave the way for Rosewheel to create 80,000 sq ft of retail space on the basement, ground floor and new mezzanine level for more than 100 shops, restaurants and stalls in phase two. Work will start in March and is expected to take up to nine months.The designs, drawn up by Smith Caradoc Hodkins, were inspired when partner Dean Smith and Bourne visited the Far East and are a riot of Chinese symbolism. Casts of split logs embedded in the floor will create a flowing river effect through the building as part of a design that Smith claims is “sensitive and respectful to this rich culture”.
Service yard to become piazza
Phase two, which is still evolving, also tackles the wider site, and will be the area’s first major development since the adoption of the Chinatown Action Plan in September 2003. Rosewheel hopes to submit an application in the first half of 2005. The focus will be a pedestrianised Newport Place, replacing what is currently a service yard with a piazza by moving access to the neighbouring car park from Newport Place to Shaftesbury Avenue.
Two Chinese gates will be added, marking the entrance to Chinatown from Shaftesbury Avenue to the north and Leicester Square to the south. There will also be a stage for Chinese festivals.
The Feng Shui Pagoda is to be brought inside the Sandringham building, which will be extended slightly into Newport Place by 3,000 sq ft and re-clad. Space has also been offered to the local Chinese Community Centre, whose lease of 28-29 Gerrard Street, above the Golden Dragon restaurant, expires in 2008.
But for all its efforts to woo the community, Rosewheel is not faring well. The fate of the pagoda sums up the stand-off. As Min Quan spokesman Jabez Lam explains: “The pagoda is there to shelter the community from bad weather. No one would put a pagoda inside a building unless there’s a leak in the roof. This just shows cultural ignorance.”
At a public meeting on 24 November, the group recorded a unanimous vote to fight the plans. Their opposition has been gaining momentum since June, when Rosewheel served section 25 notices to 17 retailers whose leases expire next March. The other 11 leases expire on a staggered basis over the next 15 years and are still to be dealt with.
Lam argues that the Chinatown Steering Group – set up by the council to oversee the implementation of the Chinatown Action Plan – should have been consulted. Rosewheel says this would have prejudiced compensation arrangements.
A nervous Westminster is now trying to distance itself from the row. A spokesman says the council had “no idea that eviction notices were going to be served. That’s a market decision”. But he adds: “As the site freeholder, any conversations we had with Rosewheel are commercially sensitive and confidential,” saying the same applies to discussions about any future applications.
“I can see why people think something fishy is going on, but there’s no question of collusion between us and Rosewheel. The company wrote to us because it wanted to make internal renovations. It took our agreement as a green light to expand the shops.”
Sixteen of the tenants agreed to vacate the building and have accepted compensation of £50,000-£100,000 each. The remaining tenant, who claims he recently spent thousands of pounds on internal refurbishment, this week dropped a legal action against Rosewheel in favour of a settlement.
But the other big bone of contention is rent. A Chinese grocer claims he was quoted £200 per sq ft – at least double the amount currently paid by most of the shops. “Rosewheel wants to fill the shopping mall with high street chains such as Tesco, Next and William Hill,” says Lam.
Fair rents or no tenants
Bowen denies this emphatically. He does expect the larger units to command rents of up to £200 per sq ft zone A, but many of these are expected to be Chinese shops.
“Most of the space in the middle of the building is not zone A, nor is the mezzanine or the basement,” he adds. “On average, the rents will be £50 per sq ft. If they were £200 per sq ft, we would have no tenants.”
Rosewheel is planning a combination of short-term licences for small shops and stalls ranging from £200-£500 per week. Despite that, the developer expects total rent at the building to more than double from £1.6m to £3.5m on completion, a 7% yield on its £50m investment.
“The main profit comes from the additional space we are creating. Not because of a huge rent hike,” says Bowen.
Rosewheel is also meeting the local groups. “It’s vital we have the community’s support to take forward to Westminster,” says Smith. “We’ll work hard to gain that support.”
But Min Quan remains unconvinced. It fears that the disruption caused by the redevelopment will cause irreversible harm to the trading environment of all the shops and restaurants in Chinatown, forcing many to close. Once complete, Min Quan claims it will push up rents in other parts of Chinatown, forcing more businesses out. “There is nothing good in the proposal. It will signal the end of Chinatown,” says Lam.
But all the 17 tenants – of which 11 are Chinese – have been invited to return to the scheme on completion. To date, 10 have said they want to return, nine being Chinese.”
We want them back,” says Bowen. “If we were the uncaring landlord people have made out, we wouldn’t be doing this.”
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Property entrepreneur Robert Bourne, 54, has hit the headlines as a Labour donor and as the underbidder for the Dome. Worth in excess of £40m, he was 182 in EG‘s Rich List 2004. Bourne’s flair lies in creating value by revamping tired buildings. “All the buildings I bought in the 1980s were buildings from the 1950s-60s with leases due to expire,” he says. “We improved them and their wider areas. Improving and adding value is integral to our plans for Chinatown. “The regeneration of this area is long overdue. Now is the time to embrace the emerging industrial power of China. We want the Sandringham Building to become home to emerging companies as a testament to modern China and an opportunity to promote Chinese brands and manufacturers that the consumer over here does not yet know.” Backed by Bank of Scotland, Bourne is investing around £50m in Chinatown – £25m to buy the site and a further £25m to carry out the two phases of the redevelopment. The end-value of the completed Gateway to Chinatown scheme could be as much as £90m. |
