Arsenal Football Club is planning to scale back its plans for a £390m regeneration scheme around its Emirates Stadium in Highbury, north
The architect for the scheme, CZWG, is revising the designs after Islington council said the scheme was too large.
Kevin O’Leary, the council’s director of environment and regeneration, said the “scale, mass and bulk” of the scheme was too large, and said that the retail and leisure facilities would conflict with existing facilities on nearby Holloway Road.
The original plans included five residential blocks, with the tallest building five storeys high.
However, at the start of this year the architect raised the highest building to 21 storeys, increasing the number of apartments from 288 to 725, and replacing an indoor sports club with a cinema, fitness cinema, bars and restaurants.
A petition from 3,000 local people was handed to Arsenal to reinstate the indoor sports centre, including local resident
The council had agreed to drop the sports requirement in exchange for a higher proportion of affordable housing and a £1.8m cash payment for sports facilities improvements.
