Detailed plans will be revealed later this month for Morden Wharf, one of the last major development sites on Greenwich Peninsula.
Developer U+I plans 1,500 homes on the site, until a decade ago home to the Tunnel Refineries glucose plant and its notorious smell which greeted drivers entering south London from the Blackwall Tunnel.
Now U+I wants to create a “a vibrant community rooted in the site’s heritage with public space at its heart”, including a 3.5 acre riverside park, a riverfront bar or restaurant, shops and a children’s nursery.
The company also wants to include industrial and commercial uses on the site, building around two existing companies who are based on the site – MDM Props, which works with museums, theatres and retailers, and Mo-Sys Engineering, which provides camera and augumented reality services for broadcasters and filmmakers. A similar approach is being taken at U+I’s planned development on the Charlton/Woolwich border, Faraday Works, the old Siemens factory site.
Plans wil include “smaller, flexible units for creative businesses and a new flexible industrial unit on Tunnel Avenue”.
U+I says it will offer 35% “affordable” housing – although there is no definition yet of “affordable”. The company is working wih the design and architecture practice OMA on the scheme.
The company is holding an exhibition at the site’s Southern Warehouse on Morden Wharf Road, off Tunnel Avenue, on Saturday 28 September from 12pm to 4pm, Tuesday 1 October from 5pm to 8pm, and Wednesday 2 October from 5pm to 8pm.
Morden Wharf, just to the south of the Blackwall Tunnel entrance, is the last standalone site on the peninsula awaiting redevelopment. To the south is the Enderby Wharf development, which is already partially built and is due to be finished by new owner Criterion Capital with rented homes in place of the notorious cruise liner terminal. Industrial sites remain to the north, including the protected Victoria Deep Water Terminal, while beyond that is land owned by Knight Dragon – the main developer on the north of the peninsula – currently housing a golf centre and Magazine, an events venue, before being redeveloped for housing at the end of the next decade.
In 2013, the site was linked with a new stadium for Charlton Athletic as part of a property deal that emerged in a court case some years later. A 40,000 capacity arena still features in a Greenwich Council masterplan drawn up in 2012, although with the council now facing tough housing targets from City Hall, that idea is likely to be quietly forgotten about.
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