The London Thames Gateway Development Corporation and the Olympic Park Legacy Company are working up plans for a Covent Garden of the east.
Proposals to transform 61 acres reaching from the Olympic Park in Stratford to Bromley-by-Bow in Ilford have been unlocked by an agreement under which the London Development Agency will transfer its long leasehold ownership of 3 Mills Studios and 3 Mills Green, E3, to the newly formed OPLC.
The 15-acre site sits at the heart of the regeneration zone.
In response, the LTGDC board agreed a compulsory purchase order on Monday for 11 acres in Bromley-by-Bow South, where a Tesco-anchored, mixed-use development is planned, as well as 9 acres in Bromley-by-Bow North.
The Tesco site will act as a gateway to 3 Mills.
The land will be integrated with the 13-acre Sugar House Lane site, a series of warehouses abutting Stratford High Street that CB Richard Ellis is marketing on behalf of Royal Bank of Scotland. A major residential scheme has been mooted for the site.
LTGDC chief executive Peter Andrews said that the quango would work with the OPLC and other stakeholders on a land-use and design brief that achieved “rapid agreement with landowners on bringing forward regeneration”.
He said that the aim was to create the “Covent Garden of east London”, retaining the area’s historic warehouses and street pattern to develop a creative businesses quarter alongside a reactivated watermill and waterside housing.
