Telford Homes, residential developers, have purchased a 58,000 sq ft plot next to Stratford International railway station, east London.
Planning permission to build two tower blocks has been granted. The tower blocks will have 380 apartments, 60% of which will be ‘build-to-rent’ and 40% classed as ‘affordable’. The two-tower scheme is also to have retail and office space across the ground, first and second floors.
The site is presently being used as a taxi rank and bus layover for the station on International Way. It has been sold to Telford Homes for development by a partnership of the Department for Transport (DfT), HSI Limited and London – Continental Railways (LCR).
The sale of this site on a long lease forms part of a long-term – LCR-led project to consolidate complex land interests and allow development and regeneration across Stratford City. In overseeing the development of Westfield Shopping Centre and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, LCR operated as part of a joint venture with Lendlease which has seen over the last nine years the development of International Quarter London (IQL) – more than one million sq ft of work space, 333 residential units together with a series of retail and community facilities.
This will be one of the first major land relinquishments that DfT and HS1 Ltd has worked on together as freeholder & leaseholder. More land has been identified for redevlopment along the HS1 route – in Stratford, St Pancras and King’s Cross.
“The aim is to be ambitious in how we decide to unlock land for new homes, with the dramatic change of the bus layover into a new community space being a good example of how brownfield sites can be developed”, said Peter Hawthorne LCR chief executive.
Continuous placemaking is about making the most of the resources re land on offer. We are increasing our long-term partnerships with organisations across the public, private, transport and real estate sectors in order to bring forward land that otherwise would have been too complex to develop both in Stratford and beyond”.
Jerome Geoghegan, Telford Homes land and planning director said: “With the development of more than 1750 homes in the area over the last 12 years we are now seeing the benefits of placemaking, making Stratford in London an exciting place to be. With the opportunity to create more homes in the neighbourhood helping to make Stratford a welcoming destination ,with this site being a prime example of our aim to build maintainable communities thereby creating exciting opportunities for our partners, residents and the local communities”.