Marks & Spencer is facing a growing backlash over its plans to bulldoze its flagship Marble Arch store on Oxford Street amid environmental and heritage concerns over the project.
Westminster City Council voted through plans to redevelop the 1930s Orchard House and two adjoining blocks on Tuesday, to be replaced by a 10-storey mixed-use building at 456-472 Oxford Street, W1.
The new development will contain 39,500 tonnes of embodied carbon. Offsetting this much CO2 would require M&S to plant 2.4m trees, according to its own report on the project.
Writing on Twitter, Jacob Loftus, chief executive and founder of developer General Projects, said: “If ever there was a gem of a building ripe for reinvention and retrofit it’s this.
“How can this be justified in the context of a climate emergency? General Projects would be happy to refurbish and extend it. It would cost less and be more profitable too.”
Geoff Barraclough, the only councillor who voted against the scheme, told fellow committee members: “There is merit in Orchard House, particularly the way it sits with Selfridges, to be reflective or subservient to it. The new building is the reverse: it’s overbearing and overshadows Selfridges, and it’s very large.
“[There will be] 39,500 tonnes of carbon in the building of this new construction. It’s great that there is some urban greening on it but, according to the applicant’s own report, those 39,500 tonnes of carbon would require 2.4m trees to offset. You can’t get 2.4m trees on top of the new building.”
Former Green Party leader Natalie Bennett added: “Did anyone say ’embodied carbon?’ #climateemergency.”
Proponents of the scheme said that 90% of the existing buildings can be recycled, and the new scheme would be significantly more efficient in operation than the current three buildings up for demolition.
Nonetheless, the new building does not achieve net zero carbon, meaning that it does not meet the requirements of Westminster’s city plan, and requires a carbon offset payment of £1,198,134 to compensate for this.
M&S has committed to being a net zero business by 2040 and has said it will cut its emissions by one-third by 2025, from a 2017 baseline of 5.7m tonnes.
Sacha Berendji, M&S’s group property, store development and IT director, said: “M&S has a long history in Marble Arch, and so we are pleased to receive approval for redevelopment.
“This means we will be able to serve the communities of the west end of Oxford Street from a modernised store offering the best of our products and services, and establish a building which positively contributes to our net zero targets over the long term with strong sustainability credentials, which is another step forward in the transformation of our store estate to be fit for the future.”
Nicholas Boys Smith, director of social enterprise Create Streets, said: “Almost everything about this decision is wrong.”
He added: “The new building is barely higher, will be widely considered to be generic and ugly spreadsheet architecture, and is a pointless waste of embodied carbon.
“Making Oxford Street worse at huge expense is not what [Westminster Council] should be promoting. By all means replace and re-facade the ugly auxiliary building, but the right approach to the fine Marks & Spencer main building is to add a mansard or two.
“We appear to have an important blind spot when it comes to protecting and listing early twentieth century traditional buildings… This needs fixing for the good of the planet and the liveability of our streets and squares.”
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Main image © Pilbrow & Partners; secondary image © Westminster City Council
