No to Inappropriate Redevelopment of St Alphage House in the City of London for JPMorgan
- Barbican Association
- Closed on
- Target:
- JP Morgan, Hammerson plc, City of London Corporation
- Region:
- United Kingdom
- Website:
- www.barbicanstalphage.com
Thank you for everyone who signed the petition.
On the 1 August JP Morgan announced that they had terminated negotiations with Hammerson plc, ending any immediate plans to develop their HQ on that site. On the same day, JP Morgan announced they have signed an agreement to move to Canary Wharf. Opposition such as that voiced here has, we have no doubt, played an important part in them deciding it would be too difficult to obtain planning permission.
JPMorgan Chase is working in partnership with property development company Hammersons and the City of London Corporation to create a 950,000 sq ft building on a relatively small site in the City of London which immediately adjoins the residential Barbican Estate, home to some 5,000 people, and a Grade II listed building.
If approved, the JP Morgan office block be the largest building in the City and will completely overshadow and wall-in the Eastern side of the Barbican.
Currently the site contains generous open space and public gardens, raised above the ground, with interconnecting pedestrian bridges. These walkways form several access routes to the Barbican, which keep pedestrians away from the noise and hazards of London Wall - a major East-West traffic artery through central London. The proposed scheme will remove these, and create a somewhat smaller park at ground level immediately next to this busy road.
What are currently pleasant and safe pedestrian-only routes will be replaced by busy street-level crossings and streetside pavements. It will close and also build over an ancient city street - Fore Street - creating a large and impermeable block in the heart of the City.
We, the undersigned, express our wholehearted opposition the redevelopment of this site to create a 950,000 sq ft headquarters building for JP Morgan, as proposed by Hammerson plc, and call upon the City of London Corporation to reject the scheme.
We consider the building to be wholly inappropriate for the site and the local area for the following reasons:
• the building is overbearingly large and on an unprecedented scale in the City,
• it will wall in and irreparably damage the setting of the Grade II-listed Barbican Estate,
• it will sever the network of pedestrian highwalks in the area and replace them with inferior street level routes across busy and dangerous roads,
• public amenity at the raised podium level of the current St. Alphage House building will be lost,
• and the construction of this building will contravene several of the provisions of the City's own Unitary Development Plan
The No to Inappropriate Redevelopment of St Alphage House in the City of London for JPMorgan petition to JP Morgan, Hammerson plc, City of London Corporation was written by Barbican Association and is in the category Environment at GoPetition.