A 36-storey student block next to North Greenwich station has been approved by councillors – but the developers said it was hard to say when work would actually start.
The plot between the station and the O2 has been empty since the Millennium Dome closed at the end of 2000, and was last used by London in the Sky, which allowed people to eat and drink while suspended from a crane.
Plans for an eight-storey office block were approved as long ago as 2010, but went nowhere as dreams of developing North Greenwich as a business hub flopped. A 36-storey block of flats was approved in 2017 but the project stalled.
Now Crosstree — a property company which has a half-share in the O2 — hopes to build a 120-metre block with 820 student bedrooms and two commercial units, with a roof terrace on the 34th floor. Greenwich’s planning board approved the plans on Tuesday night.
Ravensbourne University, which is based close by, has backed the proposal as it plans to expand over the coming years. Councillors heard that 49 per cent of students living in Greenwich borough are currently living in private accommodation, many of them HMOs, and the new block would free those up for families.
Matt Mason, a partner at Crosstree, said he hoped work would start next year, but that it was a “difficult” question to answer as City Hall also needs to approve the site and some land ownership issues needed to be tied up.
“We would like to be able to start during the course of 2025, so it won’t be this year,” he said. “And then what happens with student schemes is that you need to hit one date. If you miss the start on site, it pushes it back a whole year because you can only open these in September of every year.”
Pressed on the failure of previous proposals for the site, Mason insisted that “we fully intend to build this out” and that the plan was “a key part of our portfolio of buildings”.
Gary Dillon, the chair of planning, said there were a number of large construction projects already taking place on the peninsula, as well as other projects that had recently been approved, “which basically opens up a can of worms for logistics and pollution and other stuff”.
Beth Lancaster, a senior planning officer, said: “It will depend on timing and we’ll have to work with the applicants. Luckily it’s not lots and lots of different applicants, so it’s essentially, Crosstree and Knight Dragon [which is in charge of most of the peninsula]. So we should be able to coordinate construction management plans.”
Some 35 per cent of the accommodation will be “affordable”, which under City Hall rules is defined as up to 55 per cent of an annual student maintenance loan. Mason said the rent would be similar to the Scape student blocks further south, where he said the “affordable” rooms currently about £188/week and the rest £350/week.
The council’s public health department had said the development should include a public toilet, a call backed by Greenwich Peninsula councillor David Gardner, who said that the facilities at North Greenwich station had recently been closed.
Mason said there would be no specific public toilet but added: “I think certainly within the commercial space, our expectation is there would be a restaurant or a cafe or bar in there anyway, so, so there would be a toilet in there that’s probably accessible.
“There is a Starbucks at the entrance of the O2, which now has its own separate entrance and is open from 7am through till late, which has a toilet. So you don’t need to go through security. Nobody stops you on the peninsula from using the toilets [in other cafes].
“The station has closed its toilets, which I think is disgraceful, as someone who’s at the O2 quite a lot myself and as a man of my age. It’s really for them to open those public toilets back up again and we’d support that.”
The roof terrace would have a balustrade of 1.8 to 2 metres around it, which together with the building design would make it “very difficult” to throw things at the O2 or Peninsula Square, he added.
Councillors unanimously approved the scheme. Independent councillor Chris Lloyd, who represents West Thamesmead, mocked his own officers’ calls for a public toilet as a “daft idea”, claiming that it would be inappropriate in a building containing “young, vulnerable people living away from home for the first time”.
Lloyd added that if he had been offered the proposed block when he was studying at Greenwich University 20 years ago, he would have “bitten their arm off”.
Gardner said Lloyd’s comments on toilets were “uncalled for” and said he would back the scheme, but added he was worried about “the cumulative impact of a large number of high rise blocks on strategic views and on the [Greenwich] world heritage site”.
Conservative councillor Pat Greenwell, who represents Eltham Town, said: ”I never thought I would find myself actually in a situation where I was saying yes to such a high building, but I do appreciate that it’s very near the O2, which also has plenty of high buildings around it. It’s going to help free up properties that can then be used to take some of our people who are waiting for homes.”
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