St Mowden Drop Queens Market Plans

Frustrated with their inability to secure planning permission for the redevelopment of Queen's Market in the London borough of Newham, developer St Mowden has decided to withdraw their plans and put the scheme on ice.

Overlooking Green Street and Upton Park, the project featured a 97 metre tall, 31-storey tower, plus two shorter buildings of 12 storeys each that would accommodate 350 new apartments. At ground levelk it was intended to rebuild the market in a new 164-stall hall, as well as include 6,400 square metres of new shops, and a library.

The project had run into local opposition despite the rundown nature of what currently stands there with a local campaign that mobilised many of the existing stall holders, many of whom were fearful of the new retail space competing against their established small-holdings. In total 2,700 received against the project with the height acting as a good hammer to hit the proposals with whilst hiding naked commercial self interest.

At first it seemed the scheme would go ahead anyway with deputy mayor, Ian Clement declaring partial support, but when it came to the crunch London mayor Boris Johnson decided to listen to local opposition as he had pledged to do so in his election campaign and decided to not greenstamp the previous approval given to the project by Newham's planning committee.

The developer has since tried to come to terms with the Mayor's office and draw up plans that would be acceptable to both parties, but with negotiations have reached an impasse St Mowden has finally decided to retreat.

What happens next to Queen's Market will be interesting to see, but in an overwhelmingly low-rise area don't expect anything particularly tall replacing it.