It does seem perverse that a Council uses resources to help a multi-million pound company market a plot of land it wants to develop. Why shouldn't it offer the same service to a rate payer who wants to sell their flat or house.
It could be that there is some sort of perverse impact of targets here. A development of this kind is classed as investment - which it probably would deserve to be in an economically depressed part of the UK but in this part of London with its over stimulated property market it is hard to identify the economic benefits of a scheme like this. The economic disbenefit to beleaguered local shops of the loss of the car park are obvious. But someone somewhere may have been tasked to increase investment in the borough and this ticks a box.
The interesting thing about the map in the article is that it doesn't include the Empire House site. No information seems to be available about what is going on here but it looks very like Lend Lease have mothballed the site leaving us with an empty tower block in the middle of town and a row of shops that nobody wants to take on. It probably would be a positive if Sainsbury's got involved and moved their main store area to have a frontage on the High Road but if this was going to happen you would have thought they would be boasting about it in the South of France. |