What a difference a year makes. And community objection. In a happy case of a developer/owner who seems to have listened to local views, the Georgian terraces facing King’s Cross station are set for renovation, not demolition.
In November last year, Kings Cross Environment reported on the planning application for a 7-storey glass-fronted hotel block pushed almost right up to the Euston roadside, facing off the station. Objections flooded in to Camden, and planning consent was ultimately refused.
The same owner has now submitted plans to renovate the existing buildings and add a mansard roof extension to the 18th-century buildings, along with a brick lift shaft to the back. Overall the plans propose converting existing office space into rooms for the hotel that already occupies part of the site. Nevertheless, the devil’s in the detail, and no doubt there is constructive feedback that can be given, especially from some of the observant conservation enthusiasts and experts who live around here.
And the matter remains of what will happen to the shops along the front (one is earmarked to become the hotel’s new entrance), which although not ‘period’, are in serious need of TLC to befit their location at a gateway to London, indeed Britain.
Comments on the plans, viewable here, close next week on Thursday 20 December.
The stakes are high to get this right – the reason this development has been singled out for scrutiny here and in other media is simply because of its crucial location.
Claire,
Thanks for posting this. I have now posted my comments on the Camden Planning Site.
I requested a further setback on the ground floor to create a more “generous” sidewalk, and suggeted uniform signage across all the eventual shops. Both items i feel with be further enhancements. (i doubt we could ever get them to eliminate the modern ground floor extension on Euston Road).
Stephan Schulte
York Central
Well done all of us, and Camden. I agree wit the implication in Stefan’s comment that the single-storey extensions should go too. TfL could afford it. But that would be too much like joined up thinking.
With or without the ‘modern’ single storey extensions, this part of Euston Road will become part of the southern edge of King’s Cross’ town centre square, as the work on the north side station forecourt is completed. In future we should consider a making public realm which is traversable and urbane (more like the A1 Upper Street at Angel http://goo.gl/maps/qEYHc) not by enlarging the carriageway, but by building better quality street surroundings!
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