<% response.write("

You can use HTML tags to format the text!

") %>

FLATS AND HOTEL REPLACE OFFICES - The Wharf
__________________________________________________

SIR Robert Ogden CBE has scrapped offices in favour of apartments as another major development in the Millennium Quarter reacts to a faltering commercial market. On Monday (August 1) RPS Planning, agents for the businesstycoon, lodged plans to replace offices with a hotel and short-stay apartments as part of the £100million redevelopment of Indescon Court, Millharbour. The hotel will be situated in an 84-metre tower on the eastern side of the site, which lies at the heart of the council's Millennium Quarter. The new plans affect only the eastern side of thedevelopment and will also include shops, workspaces and community facilities. The changes would boost the number of apartments in the scheme to 850. RPS senior planning director Paula Carney said: ``We want to crack on and develop the site and need to incorporate different uses than commercial.''

The new look Indescon Court follows a trend of developers in the Millennium Quarter ditching their office plans in favour of residential developments. Ballymore Properties changed its schemes - Arrowhead Quay and 1 Millharbour - from offices to homes and Capital & Provident chose to build the apartment complex Discovery Dock instead of offices.

Rupert Cherryman, director of commercial property agent Cherrymansaid office content had ``significantly reduced'' in the area. ``I don't think it's a bad thing that residential is nudging up against Canary Wharf because it provides a more varied environment,'' he said. But Tower Hamlets Councillor Alan Amos said the borough had allowed developers to break a Millennium Quarter masterplan, drawn up in 2000, by allowing taller and more intense developments. ``The whole point of the plan was to allow a strategic plan for the area,'' he said. ``But now they are cramming as much concrete and glass as they can in this tiny pocket of land. It's gross overdevelopment which future generations will curse.


Edited by Renato Castello
(Filed: 04/08/2005)