Developer Gary Hillman, owner of London’s oldest football club, has put forward a plan with some lofty ambitions
Football’s not just a matter of life and death – it’s far more important than that. So said legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly. Developer Gary Hillman has found a way to combine the beautiful game with a scheme he hopes will move far beyond the goalposts and make substantial improvements to a hitherto unloved area of Greater London.
Hillman has plans to build a 30-acre mixed-use project on a site adjacent to the A20 in St Paul’s Cray, between Orpington and Sidcup. Called London Leisure Hub, the scheme will feature a 5,153-seat stadium, a swimming pool and multi-use arena, and will be the permanent home to London’s oldest football club, Cray Wanderers. Founded in 1860, the club, which plays in the Ryman League, has been ground-sharing with Bromley Football Club for a decade.
Also included in the scheme are 182 residential units, retail, a 115-bed hotel, and offices for the club and academy, with the total scheme costing roughly £75m.
It is an ambitious project for a local developer who builds mainly residential units – up to 40,000 sq ft a year – and likes to keep his work within a few miles of his headquarters at Hither Green, Kent. The company, called Hillman’s, was founded as a plumbing contractor by Gary Hillman’s grandfather, Nelson, in 1938.
But Hillman’s drive to find his football club a permanent home – he has been involved with Cray Wanderers for the past 18 years and is also an associate director at Crystal Palace FC – is matched by his desire to give something back to the local community in which he lives and works.
“The area needs regeneration. It has the lowest life expectancy in Greater London. [Having the facilities] would help the whole feel of the area, which also has the biggest traveller population in Europe.
“A lot of local people see this development as the catalyst to bring investment into their area and to make the people feel proud of their football club – the club, when it was playing there in the 1950s and 60s, was the main attraction and thousands used to go and see them.”
Inspiration for the London Leisure Hub comes from another nearby football club. “We are basing the scheme on Dartford Football Club up the road,” he says. “Like us, they were ground-sharing just down the road at Gravesend [in Ebbsfleet United’s ground, Stonebridge Road] and they were getting a couple of hundred people at games. But ever since they moved back to Dartford [in 2006 to a purpose-built ground, Princes Park], the crime rate has gone down.
“[Around Dartford] is more positive and they have been getting over 2,000 people at games. I think that football is an amazing trigger for a feel-good factor. People who are not involved in football find it hard to understand how much it can bring to an area when the club is doing well and people are proud of their team.”
Outline planning permission for the London Leisure Hub went to Bromley council at the end of April, and Hillman says he would like to see the scheme, on which a decision is due by the end of July, completed by mid-2014. “The worrying thing is that the lease runs out at Bromley Football Club in September 2014, so there is a possibility Cray Wanderers could fold if we don’t get it done by then,” he says.
But there is an obstacle to the scheme: the land Hillman wants to build on is classified as greenbelt. But he is ever the optimist. “Although it’s a greenbelt site, next door an industrial unit was built on what was originally greenbelt and that got changed to industrial use.
“Most people can’t believe it’s a greenbelt site. It’s rented to a farmer for £1 a year and he can’t make it pay.”
Hillman believes the development is going to be a test case for localism because, as he explains: “Normally, with localism, everyone is anti-development, but this case is unusual; 90-95% are in favour of the development because they can see the benefits for the community.
“I think we’ve got special circumstances. We have done the environmental impact assessment and more surveys than I care to think about, which I paid for. But the main thing that helped us and the thing we were waiting for is that Kent County Cricket Club had a similar scheme in Beckenham.”
Hillman says KCCC wanted to build new facilities, including all-weather pitches, a conference centre, indoor, multi-use training centre and 48 homes at its Beckenham ground. Despite the plan facing some opposition, Bromley council granted permission in January. This meant KCCC staying in the area. “We were waiting for [the KCCC decision] before we put our application in because it is a very similar project,” says Hillman.
If the London Leisure Hub goes ahead, Hillman admits it could be too big for his firm to develop alone. “At the moment I’m funding the planning application. And we know the scheme will stack up, although there might be fine-tuning with the planning. But I have been speaking to some large developers as well who might be interested if it is too big for us – but it is too early to say who that will be.”
For now, Hillman champions the London Leisure Hub, and says the buzz of helping Cray Wanderers and the local people, as well as creating something important, is what keeps him going. He says: “Property developers are like deal junkies – they find what they are going to do, then they spend XYZ on it in order to make XYZ from it – it’s going through that process that turns developers on.”
A driving force
Gary Hillman is living every boy’s dream. In the basement of his company’s headquarters in Hither Green, south-east London, lies an huge collection of rare cars and memorabilia. “I love the late 1940s, ’50s, early 1960s. It was an eventful time when people where trying to invent the future and they were coming up with some weird and wonderful stuff.”
Taking centre stage is his fondness for the Guinness Book of Records-accredited world’s smallest production car – the Peel P50. Manufactured in the Isle of Man in the 1960s, only 50 were built at that time. “I first saw a Peel Trident [pictured on p111] at a Christies auction house in 1996. It was at an auction for a micro car museum and I just fell in love with one. So I thought, right, I’ve got to find one. That’s how I relax – trying to find unusual stuff.”
But Hillman went one step further. He bought Peel Engineering, and he and his Peel business partner Faizal Khan have even appeared on the BBC’s Dragon’s Den, asking for £80,000 in funding, which they got from James Caan. The car has also appeared on the BBC’s Top Gear.
Hillman says sales have really taken off in the past few months. “We build about 25 a year. My proudest moment was when I was in Melbourne for the [2010-2011] Ashes and I saw one of my cars there on display. People were enjoying it and I just thought, ‘That was my idea’.”
The cars, which star in an advertising campaign for Cadbury’s – are bought mainly by collectors. “The car collectors market has been booming over the past few years, and people are interested in small cars,” he says. “They are very cute and everyone loves them. They say it’s the most loved car in the world.”
