Westminster Bridge - the new hot spot

Liz Hoggard
15 Mar 2010

“Shall we meet in WB1?” my friend teases.

“There's time for cocktails before the play.”

WB1 (Westminster Bridge, to ordinary mortals) is rapidly becoming the interesting new London postcode. New bars and restaurants are springing up, and finally the much-anticipated £350 million Park Plaza Westminster Bridge hotel — located slap bang on the piazza at the end of the bridge — has just had its soft opening.

The new hotel, the largest in London, marks the transformation of a polluted roundabout dominated by one of the capital's most unpopular buildings.

Its restaurant, 1WB, opens later this spring. But its real gem is the Primo bar. Here you can sip cocktails and gaze at panoramic views of the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament. Last Friday I spotted Boris Johnson there.

“It's the third hotel we've opened within three-quarters of a mile, in the past four years, in this part of the South Bank,” Andrew Swindells, the hotel's general manager, tells me. “We've seen a big change in the area.”

Frankly, it's about time. Downtown Waterloo has been looking a little shabby since Eurostar transferred to King's Cross and Charles Saatchi moved his art collection out of County Hall.

Smart Londoners remain Tate-side of the South Bank. But now arty pop-ups are injecting a new energy into the Westminster/Lambeth border.

Across the road, theatre company Punchdrunk and Kevin Spacey turned the derelict railway tunnels of Waterloo station into an art project. Earlier this month, the same space played host to the premiere of Banksy's first movie.

Around Waterloo, artists and curators have begun colonising “slack space” freed up by the recession, transforming vacant shops into “creative squats”. The empty Eurostar terminal has hosted charity dinners and this summer a theatre production of The Railway Children will be performed on the platforms.

“People are seeing the area's huge potential,” Swindells says. Not only has the London Eye proved a 10-year hit but the branded restaurants within the Southbank Centre are the highest grossing of their brand in London. “The South Bank gets 16 million visitors annually,” he explains.

Meanwhile, Shell wants to refurbish parts of its office block, P&O plans to demolish and rebuild its building and Sea Containers House is redeveloping. When the BFI moves out to its new centre, the rumour is the old building will be developed as shops or apartments. “There are some serious players looking to develop the riverside,” remarks Swindells.