Regular users of London Bridge station, SE1, will know of the redevelopment works which have taken place over the past few years, with full completion still a couple of years away. However, a few weeks ago half of the new concourse, now underneath the existing platforms, opened for the first time, marking the beginning of the end of this huge regeneration project.
The new concourse, underneath the existing train lines
When complete, not only will the station have had a facelift and an increase in capacity, the connectivity to the surrounding area will also be given a big boost. In a few years’ time when the builders pack up, you will be able to walk through the station from Tooley Street to St Thomas Street and not via a dank, dark and grimy road tunnel like before. The new St Thomas Street entrance on the south side should also open up the hospital side along with the nearby Bermondsey Street, an area which has always been a five-minute walk away from the station. With these new connections that has been reduced to 30 seconds.
A render of the new St Thomas Street entrance/exit on the south side of London Bridge
Prior to the station redevelopment going ahead, Sellar (the same developer who built the Shard, almost on top of the station) also submitted an equally adventurous scheme a stone’s throw from the site pictured above.
The EIA application submitted in 2009 included three tall towers of 30, 53 and 64 storeys to include 370 homes, a hotel and shops. The plans were met with dismay by locals, who even went to the extent of producing a fake mock-up of the scheme (putting three Centre Points side-by-side). The architects appointed for the scheme were Herzog and de Meuron, the same people who designed the Bird’s Nest Olympic stadium in Beijing and the more recent Tate Modern extension on the South Bank.
After the EIA application, and the noise from the protesters, very little happened with no forthcoming proposal. A few years later in 2013 the site was in use with a vast number of shipping containers, stacked five high. These were housing the site offices for Network Rail and its contractors who were of course developing the station over the road. Instead of sticking around for a planning fight like the “Paddington Pole”, now the “Cube”, Sellar dropped the plans with Network Rail acquiring the site for over £20m in 2013. Now with the station redevelopment nearing its end, are we likely to see these plans or similarly ambitious proposals re-emerge?”
Here’s the site in question, with the five storey site offices in the foreground and London Bridge station to the right. Picture from Google street view.
