I made this video about the ghost town near me in Newham London, and I am disgusted how it has been left in such a sorry state given it was one of Boris J’s pet projects when he was mayor.
[https://youtu.be/KpFMBSp8ZVw](https://youtu.be/KpFMBSp8ZVw)
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I live nearby in East London, and decided to take some shots of this place. My missus and I drove into this “International Business Hub” at night once and had a walk around. We noticed some TV vans parked-up, and could see some of the units had a clothing store, cake shop and other bits which was totally at odds with the place and menacingly surreal. We later discovered the film crews were filming adverts for M&S. I decided to investigate the place further, and called their number with regards to getting a viewing for a living space. I was told, that people were living here. However, it transpires that is not the case. There are few tenants here aside from The Job Centre Plus, which makes sense considering UEL is a stones-throw away.
I recently contacted Lidl who as you might be aware offer a finders fee for places where they can set up shop. I was told, they were already aware of this location and not interested at this time. In fact, that whole process felt like a scam from Lidl, because how would you know if the location you find had not already been submitted? They could just parrot a response for all people making enquiries. There’s perhaps a better process, but I digress.
So, here you have 400K sq ft. of empty office space as one of Boris Johnson’s pet projects that (drum roll) went tits-up. That is one tenth of what was planned. You can blame, Brexit, covid-19, but ultimately, it was a lack of investment and a reliance on Chinese money to make this pipe-dream a reality.
So today, this space lies empty, with no one quite sure what to do with it. The riverside location could be turned into affordable pod housing like they are rolling out since Bristol piloted the pods scheme. It could be an arts and entertainment centre and much more. But it isn’t being used for anything aside from a passageway for walkers, Students hanging out, away from the nearby campus and the odd worker taking their time to clean-up what little mess there is.
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It’s a sorry story lacking finishing touches for what is already built (I have contacted my local MP about this to see what his thoughts are).
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Thoughts anyone?
3 comments
Relationships with China soured and this struggled.
The guardian did an expose a while back.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/jul/20/empty-promise-the-fantasy-city-within-a-city-that-turned-into-a-ghost-town
I worked at Newham Council when all this kicked off. They plonked a huge balsa wood model down in reception and ABP took over a good chunk of the office. It was all locked down and the big glass box of an office was partitioned/bits hidden from view. People would come in at all hours and the whole thing seemed very weird. None of the senior management would talk about it.
Odd.