I’ve been writing about attempts to redevelop the heart of the Earl’s Court area since 2009. Like any large project of that kind, it was never going to happen quickly. But it has taken a very long time for truly constructive progress to be made.
The main achievements of the first set of plans for transforming the famous and distinctive inner west London neighbourhood were to provoke local opposition to them and to demolish the Earls Court Exhibition Centre complex that had defined the neighbourhood’s character for decades, without building anything in its place.
So when a different developer came on the scene, the Earls Court Development Company, it was encouraging to learn that it was taking a very different approach – not only to the use it wished to make of the land, but also to the people who lived near it and to the area’s remarkable history.
My continuing interest has been expressed in a variety of forms and, with a new vision for Earl’s Court’s future set to reach a crucial stage in the planning process later this year, this article pulls together the most substantial recent examples.
The very latest has been to embark on writing what I hope is a pretty definitive account of the evolution of the current plans, put together in collaboration with the developer’s chief executive, Rob Heasman. The first instalment of that account, entitled Earls Court: The Story So Far, has now been published. I’m pleased to reproduce the first section of it below:
In 2020, at the end of the first year of the pandemic, the Earls Court Development Company opened its office next door to one of London’s most sadly abandoned spaces.
For well over a century, the site in question had been the core of one of London’s most beguiling neighbourhoods, a place of imagination, excitement and entertainment, known across the globe.
Until as recently as 2014 it had been home to one of the world’s most famous exhibition centres, a London landmark that drew entrepreneurs, innovators and visitors from far and wide.
But now it was a levelled domain of ghosts. How could it be brought back to life?
For chief executive Rob Heasman, envisaging a new tomorrow for this forlorn part of Earls Court meant marshalling his and his team’s powers of imagination.
London, still absorbing the impacts of Brexit, had been hit first and hardest by Covid-19. From the start, the pandemic had damaged its economy, wreaked havoc on its cultural venues and institutions, underlined the importance of green space and green technology, and shone a sobering light on health, wealth and housing inequalities across the city.
Any major new development scheme in London would need to be alive to this new chapter in the capital’s history – a chapter only just beginning to unfold.
What would planners, investors, employers, workers, visitors and local communities be looking for that they hadn’t been looking for before? What would London as a whole – and, indeed, the whole of the country – need from the future, new Earls Court?
As well as getting to grips with these big, new international themes – to which have since been added the uncertainties caused by the invasion of Ukraine and the outbreak of trade wars – the development company team had to seek answers to some large practical questions located quite literally outside their office’s front door.
The development area was large and some of it was flat, but it was also a bit awkward. Since the 1930s, it had spanned a cat’s cradle of London Underground and other railway lines. They would still have to be accommodated. In addition, it was partially bisected by a linear raised platform above the north-south train tracks. That wasn’t going anywhere either.
A section on its western side contained the Lillie Bridge London Underground maintenance depot, where Tube trains were serviced and repaired. The A4 Cromwell Road roared past it to the north. The Old Brompton Road-Lillie Road continuum bounded it to its south.
Though the largest mostly-cleared site in the capital, it was also a peculiar shape, a rogue rectangle with a bulge and an offshoot, its contours tethered at three points to West Brompton station at the south, Earl’s Court station at the east and West Kensington station at the north-west.
A structure of particular significance stood just outside its south western boundary, next to a bus depot on Lillie Road. The 31-floor Empress State Building, completed in 1962, was one of London’s earliest skyscrapers. It had been built as a hotel, replacing an ice rink called the Empress Hall, but ended up being used by the Admiralty and the UK security services. Its name was a tribute to New York’s Empire State building.
It was a striking but perhaps incongruous presence amid an otherwise low and medium-rise residential landscape, some of it 1970s council housing, some of it Victorian terraces. However, like the rail tracks, it wasn’t for moving. And, because of its size, its presence would influence the developer’s thinking.
The local political landscape presented another sort of challenge. The site straddled the boundary between two borough councils, both of them planning authorities. One was under Labour Party control, the other was run by Conservatives. Both wanted something to fill the Earls Court void, but each would have their own priorities.
There would also be a range of views among Earls Court residents and businesses about the best way forward. They had seen an earlier redevelopment project come and go, leaving behind only a wasteland. Its failure was hastened by objections ranging from anger about demolitions to concerns about architectural design.
Such was the panoply of issues facing the Earls Court Development Company, or ECDC for short, as its personnel got to grips with their task – issues ranging from the implications for London’s development sector of a worldwide health emergency, to the peculiarities of the Earl’s Court development site.
Read rest of Earls Court: The Story So Far HERE.
After you’ve done that, and if you haven’t already heard it, listen to what was the very first episode of The London Society’s London Explained documentary podcast series, which I research write and present. Produced by award-winning BBC Radio producer Andrew McGibbon and released in September 2023, it drew heavily on archive material that captures the area’s vivid and varied cultural life, going back at least 100 years, along with the voices of local people. Listen to it HERE.
And for an excellent update on the Earls Court Development Company’s plans, enjoy the recent Talk About London podcast, co-hosted by me and London Society chief executive Leanne Tritton, in which our guests were the Earls Court Development Company’s Rebekah Paczek and Sharon Giffen. Listen to it HERE or watch below.
Still wanting more? Try a piece I wrote last October about an event at ECDC HQ, featuring cultural commentators Peter York and Travis Elborough. Read it HERE.
And then there’s my vast back catalogue of coverage of the previous redevelopment scheme, some it quite bad-tempered, for the Guardian. Find that HERE.
OnLondon.co.uk provides unique coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture with no paywall and no ads. The majority of its income comes from individual supporters, who pay £5 a month or £50 a year. They receive in return bespoke newsletters, bargain London event offers and much gratitude. Pay using any “donate” link on the website or by becoming a paying subscriber to publisher and editor Dave Hill’s personal Substack.