After a year of planning wrangles a council has finally given its approval for the creation of a £1bn Asian business district on the site of London’s Royal Albert Dock.
The scheme, for a 24-hour business complex for Chinese and Asian firms, was first unveiled by the capital’s mayor, Boris Johnson, in July last year. Since then a succession of planning disputes has slowed its progress, but now Newham Council’s strategic development committee has finally given the 35-acre project the green light.
Backed by a little known Chinese property company —Advanced Business Park Holdings (ABPH) —the regeneration of what was once Britain’s busiest dock could create as many as 20,000 new jobs and generate as much as £6bn a year for the economy.
The company says transforming the patch of empty parking lots and abandoned buildings into nearly five-million square feet of office space will take between eight and 10 years. If the ground work starts on schedule next year the first phase, one third of the scheme, should be completed by 2018.
And, claims the developer, there are no shortage of takers. The Beijing-headquartered company says its proposed Asian Business Port (ABP) has already received significant attention with more than 60 Chinese companies expressing an interest in renting office space within the complex.
“Newham Council’s approval is not just important for ABP,”commented Xu Weiping, the chairman of Advanced Business Park Holdings, “it is a huge step forward for the wider regeneration of the Royal Albert Docks.”
The man chosen to design London’s biggest office development in more than a decade is architect Terry Farrell, better known for the MI6 headquarters in London and the KK100 in Shenzhen, the highest building ever designed by a British architect.
“Historically the trading heart of the capital, this development will re-instate the Royal Docks as a commercial and trading centre for the 21st century,”he explained, adding that the scheme will continue the legacy of the London 2012 Olympics.
“The master plan creates a state-of-the-art business district for financial, high-tech and knowledge-driven industries, which will act as a catalyst for the transformation of the wider Royal Docks and east London,”said Farrell.
The man and company behind the billion-pound scheme are less well known, however. Advanced Business Park Holdings’ only other development is a 15-million square feet high-tech business centre on the outskirts of Beijing called Zhongguancun touted, in its literature, as the “Silicon Valley of Beijing”. Reviving the Royal Albert Docks will be its first overseas project.
ABP’s corporate structure is also a little mysterious. It has described itself as a foreign-funded joint venture between Dauphin International Group (England), which is registered in the UK, and a Beijing district government.
Xu Weiping, its chairman, is a former engineer turned government worker, who even had a career in journalism, according to a lengthy biography on ABP’s website. In an attempt to downplay his role in an often vilified industry in China, the profile also says Xu “never considers himself a real estate tycoon”.
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