Euro Hotel, Elm Road, Wembley Central
Proposed Aparthotel (I don't remember Elm Road being that wide!)
No it's not!
Apart from the Wembley Edge planning application already descibed on Wembley Matters (LINK) another large development proposal that has been around for a while comes to Planning Committee tonight.
This is for the development of the site of the Euro Hotel (previously Elm Hotel) on Elm Road in Wembley Central and the adjoining Spiritualist Church in St Johns Road.
They would be replaced by an Aparthotel covering 10,090 square metres as against the current 1,258 square metres.
The proposal:
Demolition of existing hotel building and community centre [church?] and erection of a part 6, part 8 and part 10 storey 318 room aparthotel plus basement accommodation with associated ancillary facilities, community floorspace (Use Class F1/F2),servicing, landscaping and cycle and refuse storage.
So what is an Aparthotel. Officers provide the answer:
Apart-hotels are defined within the London Plan as self-contained accommodation (within Use Class C1), providing for short-term occupancy, with a concierge and room service. the length of stay would be limited to a maximum of 90 days per occupant, and a planning condition would secure that residencies at the hotel accommodation of 90 days or more are to be prevented, to ensure that the use of the hotel accommodation would meet the needs identified within the London Plan and Brent Local Plan for visitor accommodation.
Each room would have a double bed, with storage, a shower and toilet en-suite and a kitchenette facility. Inclusive access has been confirmed as integral to the design of the hotel. It has been confirmed that10% (16) of the hotel rooms would be accessible in accordance with London Plan policy E10.
Brent received a 33 person petition in favour of the development which appears to include local businesses and 14 objections.
The impact on neighbouring two storey homes in St Johns Road and Elm Road is considerable and unsurprisingly most of the objections come from them:
From a legal view point, my main objections are:
1) that the location of this planning proposal does NOT fall under the "Tall Building Zone". This is a residential zone and height restrictions should be observed.
2) I have it on good authority that the hotel group own many proprieties around the area of the existing hotel (I believe they own nearly all the houses on Elms Road, many of the houses on St Johns Road going north right up to the bridge and they also own houses on Acacia Avenue). Consultations have been sent by post to all these properties and there needs to be due diligence in identifying who owns the property when the consultations are returned. I strongly believe that the hotel should only be allowed to vote once.
From a personal view point, my objections are:
The planned building development would block out all light, many houses on St Johns Road would be in the shade all year round, with no sunlight ever hitting the windows or paving; this means it will be mostly wet underfoot - even worse with snow and ice which would stay longer than normal.
Parking would be harder for residents, especially on event days: Hotel coaches would take up 3 or 4 parking spaces and would only need 1 permit per day to stay. The plans show that two resident parking bays would be removed and there is already a shortage of spaces. Please note that on St Johns Road, none of the houses on the west side of the road (right up to bridge) have off-street parking.
I would also add there would be major TV disruption for anyone who uses freeview and has a freeview aerial on their roof, as any house north of the proposed development will have their aerials pointing in exactly that direction. TV channels (especially HD) would be limited, or worse still, freeview may not work at all.
For all the reasons listed above, I strongly object.
View from St Johns Road towards the High Road.
Officers comment on the loss of the Spiritualist Church:
The redevelopment of the site would involve the loss of the existing Spiritualist Church. A schedule of areas submitted with the application indicates that the existing church building has a total GIA of 145sqm. The application proposes the reprovision of 220sqm of flexible F1/F2 community space over ground and basement floor level, indicating that the social infrastructure space would be fully re- provided.
They conclude regarding the whole application:
The aparthotel proposed with an ancillary flexible F1/F2 space is considered to make efficient use of the land, which would regenerate the site which would provide a positive contribution to the emerging streetscene and the positive employment and economic benefits associated with the hotel.
The building is considered to have an appropriate scale and massing of proposed buildings would relate well to the existing and future site context. As the report acknowledges, there is expected to be some impacts on existing daylight and sunlight light conditions to existing residential dwellinghouses nearby.
The impacts would be commensurate with development of this form and such impacts must be balanced against the planning benefits of the proposal. Overall, and on balance, the impacts associated with the development would it is considered be outweighed in this case by the benefits of redeveloping the site, economic benefits and public realm improvements.
The Planning Commitee begins at 6pm tonight and can be viewed HERE
Docklands 2 site-by-site, bite-by-bite, bit-by-bit, policies plan-by-policies plan; where is the infrastructure plan mitigation for such massive population growth in these zone breakouts into unchosen Brent suburbia's?
ReplyDeleteSouth Kilburn is 45 ha of market decides authoritarianism totally surrounded by conservation areas and neighbourhood plan protected areas. While Wembley Mega City looks like it will eat much of Brent with expansive market decides authoritarianism massive population growths out onto its unprotected 'waste of land' suburbia's.
ReplyDeletePlease make sense when responding to articles, which have nothing to do with South kilburn
DeleteTotally agree with Anonymous 23.13.
ReplyDeleteThe comments section on various planning applications have recently been flooded by an individual who appears to be randomly regurgitating a dictionary and making no sense at all.
I agree, Martin you really have to stop posting this verbal diarrhea from this individual you comments on everything and makes no sense whatsoever, no one understands anything this person says.
DeleteBrent is a development borough which has 8 Growth Areas according to Brent Local Plan. Growth Areas like Conservation Areas is an urban zoning type. I was comparing a Brent Growth Area that is enclosed and limited by strong protected areas surrounding it to another Brent Growth Area that is out of 'Area' expansive due to having non protected areas around it, thereby being able to 'break out' of its Growth Area in a manner that SK is not able to. A expansive colonise dynamic to Wembley Growth Area.
ReplyDeleteIt is a serious issue why massive population growing Growth Areas are not being infrastructure grown to match their welfare sate access needs and car-free housing should mean major new amenities investments near/amongst these new 'sky house' homes.
The same house type being non protected in Elm Road here is legally protected/community protected too in conservation areas elsewhere in Brent. Zonal planning is pretty arbitrary and special interest groups-led.
Docklands 2/ Docklands West is the giant scale West London 6 borough car-free housing City towards 2050 building as an opaque/ghost project ( that only Barnet so far concedes as happening). Elm Road 'site' is just a tiny fragment of this new City. Of course a giant new city un-announced is not going to make sense, but it is happening regardless and needs infrastructure planning and major capital investment to safeguard existing and new residents rights to equitable community, health and civic rights.
Brent has been poor at getting new community infrastructure public good gains out of developers when compared to other councils and that with Labour in power nationally should surely be about to change?
Growth Area displacement
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments on the convoluted commenter - I can see your frustration. There is, sometimes, a nugget of useful comment amidst the jargon and confused sentences but hard to decipher, Let this be a message to the commenter: Plain English in simple sentences and no jargon - otherwise your comments will be deleted.
ReplyDeleteThanks everyone for your patience.
Apologies Martin, to clarify....
ReplyDeleteDocklands a tall tower and car-free London existing urban precedent that we can all see and experience, is a way of referring to the West London new City emerging site-by-site. Elm Road a tall building outside of a tall building zone is one site in this emerging West City project. Of course West City is open to denial because unlike Docklands it has not yet been built out.
I think this emerging City is chaotic, austere, opaque and low budgeted rather than being government planned as a high quality new car-free towers West City at the present time, of course that could and should change.
A random tall building can't appear in the areas surrounding South Kilburn tall building zone because these surrounding areas all have strong forms of planning protection put in place by authorities, whereas around Wembley as Elm Road proves random tall buildings can appear and will keep appearing.
Hope this makes clear regarding Elm Road and the bigger picture of what is happening.
Than k you for clarifying.
DeleteDocklands 1980's across 4 boroughs was a transparent project from day one because it was re-developing on abandoned docks and industrial sites.
ReplyDeleteThe new West City is kept opaque because it often seeks to re-develop on places where people already live, have community and call home. West City would be a higher quality project if it became like 1980's Docklands a transparent 6 borough massive scale urban change invested in to scale to best safeguard and support its car-free housed massive population growth. A high quality human new modern city, they can and do exist.
If you drive up onto the Westway heading west, you will see the West City emerging as tall build fragment sites. Barnet Council and Simon Jenkins so far see this new West City more will surely start to do so as the years go by. On Elm Road they certainly know about it.
Excellent blog site Martin and Thank You!
ReplyDeleteI think people commenting on your blog are making varied points trying to understand and hopefully add to it.
Suburban houses like Elm Road being bought-up by developers with pretty much guaranteed tower planning permission from Brent, surely have a much higher actual value (actual land value) than the same houses sited in a conservation area where as an asset it would be considerably constrained by having zero potential for tower re-developing, being sited in a zoning heritage protected in English law?
This is an interesting 'true hidden value' question that Elm Road raises as further such sites arrive before planning committee.