U+I’s Deptford Market Yard was a development fraught with challenges: navigate a recession; keep residents and the local authority happy; boost disposable income; and somehow convince London that offering no affordable housing was not in fact a bad thing.
The company, which last year completed the £50m project in a public-private partnership with Lewisham Council, says it used the art of collaboration to overcome such hurdles.
The overarching aim of the project was to build alliances between residents, traders, the developer and the local authority landowner. For the developer, this meant listening intently to the council’s desires, and treating locals as collaborators rather than a potential threat.
The council had asked the partners to deliver a scheme that would increase footfall and spending on Deptford High Street, SE8. This was more of a priority than affordability. Step forward Cathedral (now U+I), which entered into an “open book” partnership with the council to help Lewisham deliver on these goals.
The council wanted the developer to put top architecture and fresh public realm at the heart of the scheme, while creating 100 permanent jobs and generating a “socioeconomic benefit” of more than £8m.
For the council, retaining the land would mean a profit share on top of the inevitable increase in business rates and council tax.
“We built trust in to it from early on,” says Richard Upton, deputy chief executive of U+I. “You have to think of it as though you have been their neighbours for 10 years – we don’t live at our schemes for 10 years, although we probably should.”
The developer’s “become local” ethos meant that when recession struck in 2008, the company did not just put up hoardings and allow the site to languish; it opened a pop-up café, brought an old train carriage onto the site, and organised events such as film screenings.
Was this clever marketing, or a genuine act of goodwill? The answer is probably both. But when the scheme went through Lewisham’s planning department in 2012, it received only one letter of complaint. “[The local business owners and residents] work hard to eke out a living. We got to know them and understood and respected their sensitivities,” says Upton.
To support the growth story, the developer built more than 120 private residential units, designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners. When those units were then forward sold to Hong Kong investor LJ Partners, there was a significant public backlash among Londoners, with the press accusing the firm of gentrifying the area and trampling on the entrepreneurial spirit that had long belonged to the site.
In this context, communication and collaboration were even more vital. Upton says he went to see the complainants personally and was even boldly photographed in front of a sign saying “developers are parasites” to show the company was willing to tackle the negative PR head on.
Collaborating with the council wasn’t always easy, either. Upton says one planner who came in halfway through the project wanted “to make everything difficult for everyone else”.
“There are some people who don’t want to collaborate,” he says.
Yet U+I’s award-winning technique is to convince public bodies that relations between stakeholders and developers do not have to be combative by default. With projects such as its Deptford Market Yard, it wants to show the rest of the world – especially future partners – that true collaboration can align people’s interests after all.
