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Planning inquiries are not for those with a low boredom threshold. That was evident from the sparse attendance at a hearing on Tuesday at the Oasis community learning centre in Lambeth to hear evidence for and against the building of three rather tall towers adjacent to Waterloo station.
The argument for building "the three sisters" is fairly straightforward. Developer P&O wants to replace some very scruffy 12-15 storey blocks on York Road with three much taller blocks.
The sisters will be of 22, 28 and 33 storeys. The height advantage for P&O is of course financial rather than aesthetic.
The height disadvantage is that the two office, and one residential, towers will spoil the view for anyone in Parliament Square who wants to take in the vista over the Thames to County Hall on the South Bank.
That is because the towers, which have been designed by the respectable firm of architects Allies and Morrison, will stick up behind Ken's old palace and spoil the skyline.
This is the firm view of English Heritage, the Government watchdog whose thankless task is to be the last line of defence against the evils of overdevelopment. Lambeth council was okay with the plans for the site, which P&O rather stupidly failed to redevelop during Ken Livingstone's build-it-high boom. But even his successor Boris gave the sisters a nod last year, after some hesitation.
So P&O, owned now by the ruler of Dubai, thought it was home and dry. But English Heritage, led by the televisual Dr Simon Thurley, decided to intervene. That led to the government ordering the eight-day inquiry, which ends today with a walk around the site.
The hearing took place in a cheerless room with faulty microphones on the fifth floor of the sixties Oasis building, reached by the lucky in an unreliable lift. The unlucky took the stairs. Presiding over the event was Ava Wood, a patient woman from the Planning Inspectorate. She needed to be. Nicholas Collins, an unfailingly polite young man from English Heritage, was grilled for what seemed like forever by P&O's grizzled QC Christopher Katkowski on the exact difference between "highly visible" and plain "visible".
He was then asked if English Heritage was against tall buildings "in principle" or not? Collins was forced to say "not" about five times by Katkowski.
Kit Kat, as he is known, seemed pleased with himself for wringing this admission from Collins.
The English Heritage lawyers did look a bit unsettled. But the 10 members of the public watching just looked bored.
Appearances can be deceptive. Hundreds of millions of pounds are at stake. The new application contains well over one million square feet of space, more than four times the amount contained in the existing buildings.
What gets built could be worth more than half a billion pounds. If P&O is forced to halve the height of the towers, it will halve the value of the blocks.
The hearing might be boring. But for P&O the outcome is anything but.
Taxpayer-friendly way to build 900,000 homes
The amiable and ambitious Conservative leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council has come up with a good idea. Stephen Greenhalgh has figured a way to raise £125 billion to spend on public housing and build 900,000 new homes over 10 years without it costing the taxpayer an extra penny.
There is of course a major catch: it would mean abolishing the Homes and Communities Agency super-quango just established by Labour. They won't like that. But on the basis that the Conservatives might be running things next year, it is worth taking a look at the Greenhalgh plans. They are explained in a 74-page pamphlet published by think tank Localis this week.
Here is a (very rough) guide: First you raise the subsidised rents of Britain's four million council and social housing tenants from the average of £100 a week to as close as you dare to £130 a week — the average private sector rent. To prevent riots, the extra £30 is handed back in the form of housing benefit to tenants.
That will cost £5 billion — which comes from commandeering the budget of the abolished Homes and Communities Agency.
Over 10 years this adds up to
£50 billion flowing into the coffers of local authorities and housing associations.
That will allow them to borrow an extra £75 billion over 10 years — enough to build half a million new homes.
The other 400 000 new homes come from selling off homes to tenants who will be given a “buy one get one free” equity offer — pay 25% for your home and get another 25% free. What do you reckon Mr Cameron?
A moving tale of rent-free office blocks
Fancy a nice new office in the City? Think about it, now. A Japanese bank last week set a precedent that has chilled the bones of landlords holding vacant space.
The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi has saved itself £35 million in rent, because it will not be paying a single penny for the first four years.
The deal has been done with British Land to take 38% of Ropemaker place, which lies next door to the Chiswell Street Brewery.
The office tower boasts very special windows that stick out and shade the cladding, thus saving a fortune in air-conditioning bills.
The developer is naturally keen to maintain the fiction that the rent for the 187,000 sq ft of space is £46.50 per sq ft for the first five years, which comes to about £43 million.
But with four years rent-free, the real outlay until 2014 is closer to £8 million, more like a tenner a square foot.
British Land isn't crazy. In 2015, the rent leaps to £52.50 for the next 15 years. So don't go asking your current landlord for a reduction to £10. Move
Ground Zero towers stalled by cash rows
Ground Zero is mostly going to stay at ground level for decades to come, according to a report from Cushman & Wakefield that was leaked in America last week.
The property agent reckons that lack of demand for office space means it might take until 2037 for the 16-acre World Trade Center site to be rebuilt — a full 36 years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Six towers totalling 10 million sq ft were planned. One has never been designed. One was built. Plans for three have been drawn up — but remain as plans because there are now terrible money rows going on between landlord Larry Silverstein and the Port Authority which owns the freehold.
Work has begun on the 1776 ft Freedom Tower but the Bush-era name has been quietly dropped.
The only bit of good news is that a Chinese trading company has promised to take a couple of floors.
