UKC community
Heart of East Greenwich New community on the way The Heart of East Greenwich development will create a new destination and identity for the local community with a public square and community facilities at its heart. Hadley Mace, a joint venture between Mace and Hadley Property Group, became the preferred development partner in 2011, working with the Home and Communities Agency (HCA), Greenwich Council and NHS Greenwich, the primary care trust, on the project. HCA is a single, national housing and regeneration delivery agency for England. Its vision is to create opportunities for people to live in homes they can afford in places they want to live, by enabling local authorities and communities to deliver the ambition they have for their own areas. The main goals for the project are to provide:• Regeneration of Woolwich Road, and the re-introduction of active retail frontage there. • A new public square. • The integration of the site with the surrounding urban grain. • Provision of a substantial number of new homes with a high proportion of affordable, key-worker and family units. • A carbon-neutral, sustainable development. • A community resource including the new Greenwich Centre providing leisure, library and health services. The 645-home scheme will transform the former Greenwich District Hospital site into a modern complex, offering a range of high quality homes and brand new community facilities. The focal point of the development is the Greenwich Centre, which will house a library, leisure facilities, an NHS health centre and new Greenwich Council service centre. Residents will benefit from the provision of these first class amenities alongside the new homes, almost a third of which will have three- or four-bedrooms to accommodate families.
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The Greenwich District Hospital was demolished in 2006. It was built in the 1960s upon the site of the previous St Alfege’s Hospital, which was built in 1931 and replaced in 1963, but the district hospital was closed in 2001. Vanburgh Hill is the road that runs alongside it and it runs uphill towards Blackheath. It is perpendicular to the A206 Trafalgar Road/Woolwich Road, which heads toward Greenwich in the west and Woolwich eastward. The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said: “News that the Heart of East Greenwich project is now pressing on full steam ahead is fantastic to hear. It is a landmark regeneration scheme, as part of a determined effort we are making across London to bring forward public land for development. As well as bringing some vital new facilities such as a library and leisure centre to the community, it will deliver quality housing that will make a real difference to families in the area.” Of the 645 dwellings, 50% will be provided as affordable homes. Of these, around half will be social rented homes, and the remainder intermediate homes delivered through the London Wide Initiatives. All the residential layouts comply with the essential standards of the Scheme development Standards and the main principles of the Lifetime Home Standards. Social rent units will be designed to meet Parker Morris space standards. Across the masterplan 40% of the residential accommodation areas is allocated to threeand four-bed family units. Each of the residential blocks has a different character and aspect. Block one will be a range of private and affordable one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments characterised by proximity to the public square. Block two will have a private communal garden at first floor level, which provides
the focus for a range of private and affordable, predominantly two- and threebedroom apartments. Block three will be a range of private and affordable one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments organised around a large, private communal garden. Some ground floor units have their own front doors opening out onto the street. Upper level apartments are organised in clusters around small cores oriented towards the shared garden. Block four will be a row of stacked threebedroom duplexes, with ground floor accessed units providing family accommodation and private rear gardens, while upper units have east facing terraces, and block five will be a row of four-bedroom family townhouses providing an up to date version of the Victorian terraced housing bordering the site. The design approach for the facades is to unify the five buildings so they can be seen as being part of the same family, while at the same time ensuring the five separate blocks have their own unique identity and appearance. The project aims to demonstrate exemplary performance in energy, water use, material use, waste, construction practice, planning and biodiversity to achieve net zero carbon. This zero carbon initiative is a requirement for new developments, as stated on the London Authority website. It requires the following in planning permission:• Be lean: use less energy. • Be clean: supply energy efficiently. • Be green: use renewable energy. Mace is behind the design of the new east Greenwich hub and the idea was to minimise environmental impact and reduce water and energy consumption. Mace is an international consultancy and construction company with an £850M turnover in 2010, employing 3,000 people and operating across 65 countries. Mace’s >