Meanwhile the London Square Site Director and Site Manager have agreed to come to a public meeting in January when residents will be able to ask questions about the timetable and processes they are following. The event will be at 7 pm on January 21st, at Lochaber Hall.
All local residents are welcome. Full details can be found here. Please follow the link to let us know if you intend to be there.
The FUSS Christmas Fair at Hither Green will be on Saturday 6th December, noon to 5pm. The organisers promise more than 50 stalls, food and drink, live music and Father Christmas. It all happens around Staplehurst Road near the station.
London Square’s drawing of how the development will look from Burnt Ash Road
Victor Bellamy, the Senior Site Manager for London Square’s operations south of the river, is hugely enthusiastic about the Leegate development. He says “It’s going to be absolutely stunning.”
A cynic might think ‘he would say that, wouldn’t he’? And there are plenty of Lee residents who don’t agree and are appalled by the height of the main tower, and the overall design of the development.
Victor, however, is genuinely anxious to build good relations with the local community. He and Aidan Pritchard, the Project Director, have offered to come to a public meeting in January so they can explain how the demolition and building phases of the development will be managed.
“I like to engage with local people, purely and simply because you find the lay of the land and you find out what’s going on,” Victor told the Lee Manor Society. It was Victor who told his bosses the name Blackheath Gate would play badly in Lee. The firm is now reviewing it.
Now that Lewisham planners have approved London Square’s new proposals for Leegate, Victor and his colleagues are working on the timeline for the development.
“Soft stripping” of easily removable items is already underway. Victor Bellamy expects scaffolding to start being erected in the next few days so the ‘hard demolition’ can get going. The existing buildings will be covered while the asbestos removal and demolition is carried out. He says there is actually very little asbestos in the site; mainly in the old toilets, but the site will be pressurised to ensure that asbestos can’t escape outside.
London Square is also in discussion with Transport for London about the fate of two trees which TfL planted and want preserved (as does the Lee Manor Society). We will aim to discover the outcome of those discussions.
The demolition team will start in the front corner at the Lee Green crossroads and work its way back. Victor expects demolition to be completed fairly quickly – by the spring – because the existing Leegate buildings are mostly single-skin and won’t put up much resistance. Much of the rubble will be crushed and kept for hardcore in the new development.
A major challenge is fears about water mains bursting once the buildings are demolished. “Obviously, if you’ve got a building site on top of a water pipe for 20 years, and you take it off, that’s going to expand and explode,” he says. Thames Water are conducting tests at the moment to come up with solutions.
Electrical power to the site has already been diverted and BT are busy dealing with communications connections. There is already ground penetration drilling continuing, to confirm there is no WW2 ordnance remaining.
What about noise and disruption to local residents? Working hours on the site will be 8 am to 6pm, Monday to Friday. If they work on Saturdays, they will finish by 1pm. Victor admits there will be noise, he is sorry but he can’t do anything about it. There will be phone numbers on the gates for residents to call if there is an emergency.
Lorries coming out of the site will have to go through wheel scrubs to reduce the amount of mud they take out onto the roads.
At full tilt, there will be around 150 workers on the site. They will have parking inside the cordon so they don’t take up space on nearby roads (ironic when you consider that the residents of the finished development won’t get anywhere to park, apart from Blue Badge holders).
Once the demolition is underway London Square intends to erect a sales office on the corner at the Lee Green crossroads.
The Lee Community Garden has announced new dates for its winter sessions. You can find them on the Community Garden page. Meanwhile here are some pictures the volunteers took at their most recent session.
Dan Griffin sent through this update:
Ann, Farrah and new recruit Lara had a productive time yesterday at the recent session (Sunday 16th November). Lots of leaves were cleared and collected for mulch, all beds were weeded and we harvested carrots and Jerusalem artichokes. A very Christmassy Robin, whom we have called Ruby, made several appearances on the fence.
It was also good to meet new recruits James and Martha, who hope to be at the next session.
