Olympia 2nd February 2025

Olympia 2nd February 2025

Olympia entrance

Olympia Hyatt Hotel

Conference Centre entrance

Olympia Music Venue

Music Venue looking towards stage

Olympia Theatre – looking towards proscenium

Olympia Offices

Glass canopy: restaurants, looking East

The Olympia project is approaching completion after over seven years of planning and construction, and has been holding ‘sneak peeks’ for locals to see in and around selected parts of the building in recent weeks. We were fortunate enough to join one of these tours.   As has been fairly longstanding policy, no independent photos were allowed, but a set of Olympia’s own photos were provided instead. We saw many of the views shown here.

The scale of the whole development is immense as we’ve said before – remembering that we didn’t go anywhere near the existing (open) parts of the site – the main exhibition halls, areas such as the Pillar Hall, or the Maclise road car park – AKA Hyatt hotel and school, or indeed the Hotel being built above the Hammersmith Road frontage.

The most complete part of the building that is not yet open is the music venue, billed as The Olympia Music Hall , cleaned and ready for imminent fit-out by the tenant AEG – the same organisation that runs the existing O2 Arena in Greenwich. The capacity is in excess of 4000, slightly more than the Hammersmith Apollo, but the number here is an ‘all standing’ one with a relatively small gallery and VIP area – shown with a couple of people standing in it in the photo looking towards the stage. The equivalent ‘standing’ for the Apollo is 5300.

By contrast, the 1500-capacity theatre is the least well advanced of all the areas, though right next to the music venue, simply because it was started last in the programme, and had to be built entirely from the ground up. Photos show the underside of the raked seating structure (in white), and the size and substantial height of the backstage area can clearly be seen. In fact so cavernous is the backstage area, that they unusually plan to build a couple of floors of office/theatre administration on top of the fly-tower. There’s an orchestra pit provided for this conventional proscenium-style auditorium, allowing for musicals. When the shell/core construction is complete, this will be fitted out by well-known CharcoalBlue consultants, for the selected operator Trafalgar Entertainment.

Interlinking the back of these venues, and the offices / conference centre is a substantial open elevated walkway, the size of a road, which sits above and between the two existing exhibition halls, and leads to the glass canopy restaurants (pictured), and then eventually to the large stairs and escalators down to Olympia Way and the railway. There was some discussion about a huge video wall – or rather video ceiling – along this walkway, which given the contrast between the open Eastern end, and the somewhat subterranean feel to the other end, will be welcome. The glass canopy area is open, and the part-covered roofs of the restaurants are also planned to be used for further hospitality, though a number of us, on a cold February morning tour, felt that here, optimism had triumphed over the realities of the British weather.

Olympia Sneak Peek

We had the opportunity to see an office floorplate (pictured above), which was as unremarkable as office floorplates typically are, apart from it’s size and the vista from it’s windows and balcony, on which were also able to stand. There’s a excellent uninterrupted view all the way across to Crystal Palace and the South Downs, via Earls Court’s Empress State Building from these private (for the office’s use) balconies, which will surely be a big pull factor.

ECDC review meeting at ‘Conversation Corner’
November 2024

The size of the hybrid planning application for Earls Court – 826 weighty documents – means that to address it meaningfully needed substantial resource. We teamed up with local civic and amenity societies and London Forum representatives to review the proposals in detail. This was helped in no small part by the work that each group has put in over the last three years of consultation and discussion with the developers, Earls Court Development Company (ECDC), and the huge level of institutional knowledge they brought.

The Earls Court team suggest that the plans are easier to read on their website, as they’re organised by subject, though you may need both as the ‘flipbook’ format used in places won’t cover all needs. The application appears in the respective planning portals under refs 2024/01942/COMB (LBHF) and  PP/24/05187 (RBKC).

The word ‘hybrid’ means detailed for phase 1, outline for the rest; there’s a useful planning guide on their site including the helpful timing graphic showing phasing until 2038, included in the montage below. Note that some CGI imagery uses extremely wide-angles, and would not be what we, or the planners, would call ‘verified views’ – i.e. as your eye would perceive.

While we clearly support the redevelopment of Earls Court – a huge empty site for over a decade, known formally as the Mayor’s Earl’s Court/West Kensington Opportunity Area  – we’re yet to be convinced that this plan is so much better than the original CAPCO one, appearing higher and much more dense – four times the original gross density in the 2012 SPD – and about twice the gross density of the CAPCO scheme by our best estimates – much of the density being on the LBHF side of the tracks. This has resulted in much greater pressure on open space, reduced spacing between buildings, increased building heights, especially around the Empress State building, and greater impact on surrounding conservation areas, especially Brompton Cemetery and the conservation area of Philbeach Gardens and Eardley Crescent.

ECDC review societies

We recently submitted Joint comments to both LBHF and RBKC, which we fully endorse, objecting to the proposal on the following seven grounds:

1. Density – with buildings up to 42 storeys – exceeding the Empress State building next door by nearly ten storeys, and with a net density estimated at 600 dwellings/hectare in LBHF, approaching twice the level of the most dense inner city aspirations of the 2016 London Plan, unaligned with current London Plan Housing policy H1, and LBHF local plan policy HO4.
2. The density and heights would bring substantial light and overshadowing issues for Philbeach Gardens, Eardley Crescent, Lillie Road, West Kensington & Gibbs Green estates and the West Cromwell Road. 
3. The development is unsympathetic to the local neighbourhood in many respects (heights and  architecture), contrary to the Local Plan policy DC2. The choice of multiple architects has not so far created a harmonious mix of complementary buildings – an almost unique opportunity here – more a White City jumble, which has been the hallmark of many Mayoral Opportunity Areas.
4. A rather overdesigned park that is too small with inadequate actual recreational space and facilities, and that would arrive later than the tall buildings around it.
5. The cultural offerings are piecemeal and lack ‘The Wonder’ that Earls Court aims to restore. This proposal represents a missed opportunity, resulting in a generic mixed-use development that could be anywhere.
6. Inadequate vehicular access for much of the site for servicing and accessibility.
7. A lack of necessary improvements to public transport provision, given the car-free nature of the proposal. Despite the top-rated 6b PTAL, Earls Court is the only station that is ‘step-free’, but there are long walks and specific mini-ramp locations to achieve this. West Brompton is partly step-free, requiring temporary ramps on request, and West Kensington station is not at all accessible, unchanged in decades. Significant upgrades are needed using developer contributions to improve them.

Lyric House, 149 Hammersmith Road [33 flats]

255 Hammersmith Road (former L’Oreal) [137 flats]

Former William Whiteley’s Depositories (photo: GLIAS) [119 flats]

161 Hammersmith Road (former Virgin Media) [94 flats]

Since the election of the new government, we’ve seen a significant rise in medium to large offices in Hammersmith being proposed for conversion to residential use, under Permitted Development (PD) rules which are much more relaxed than normal planning rules. So far, nearly 400 potential flats have been proposed, all on busy main roads, with Hammersmith Road a particular hotspot. The Chairman’s annual report highlights developments at 255 and 149 Hammersmith Road, as well as the former Whiteleys Depository near the railway/A4 in West Kensington. Another proposal at 161 Hammersmith Road (Griffin House, formerly home to Virgin Media), was recently refused by planners, but likely to return with revisions, or an appeal.

The Telegraph recently reported Hammersmith a ‘refusenik’ in accepting such conversions, and we can see plenty of reasons why they might refuse. But Deputy PM, Angela Rayner, has just requested 81,000 new homes per year in London (a doubling compared to recent achievements), as part of the new government’s electoral commitment for 1.5m homes in this parliament. There will be significant political pressure.

As a Civic Society, how should we best respond?  Should we welcome the provision of more housing, albeit potentially substandard as reported, with few, if any, of the amenities we would normally expect – just to be a place to sleep – and lament the likely permanent loss of business and commercial space? Or just celebrate The Brave New World?

The office Merry-go-Round

London’s vacancy rate stands at 10%, a 20-year high and up from about 5% when the pandemic struck, though still well below the circa 14% level seen in New York

Olympia redevelopment offices (photo: LDRS)

We have a number of substantial buildings being proposed for conversion, while an equal, possibly larger number, are still being constructed – we refer mostly to Olympia in the same road of course, starting to open next year according to recent news. We’re aware of other smaller developments still on the drawing board, or at early planning stages, such as proposed offices at Shepherds Bush Market and 76-80 Hammersmith Road. The developers of most of these mention “biotech” and “lab space”. Why the merry go round? In an ideal world, wouldn’t we just (re)use what we have?

Many larger offices appeared in the 1980-2000 period when desktop computers arrived making office requirements pretty uniform, and open-plan became a thing. These were refurbished once, twenty-ish years ago, and are all now past their sell-by date – literally – and can no longer be rented because the better, newer ones are what people want to rent, and be seen renting. Hammersmith suffers through having an oversupply of what is said to be dated stock – expensive to refurbish to the expected rentable standards, and perhaps impossible to repurpose for biotech. Some developers claim the restrictions of existing floor-ceiling heights rule them out even as modern offices, though there’s always a way, should one be determined.

Property data company CoStar reports “London’s vacancy rate stands at 10%, a 20-year high and up from about 5% when the pandemic struck, though still well below the circa 14% level seen in New York,” Away from the centre, vacancy rates in Hammersmith are about 19.3% and Docklands about 16.2%, CoStar says.

The developers of 255 Hammersmith Road, the largest PD conversion currently proposed, told us a year or so ago – when they were proposing an extremely green office refurb – that ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) were high on renter’s shopping lists. In building terms, that means green, plus providing better amenities for employees. Existing buildings such as 255 score pretty poorly here – L’Oreal moved to a new building in White City, with its recent award winning landscaping, and 245 next door – formerly Bechtel – was totally demolished and rebuilt with amenities, such as its award winning landscaping.

Then there are prevailing economic conditions, added to redevelopment time – Olympia was consented exactly a year before the pandemic – it might not have come forward as the proposal we see now – and 245 was built in a different economic climate, becoming that most modern of things, shared workspace.

This now all points to the quickest path of least resistance – PD conversion to resi, eschewing all those ESG aspirations, with pretty much guaranteed sales, rather than the more expensive pre-pandemic option of rebuilding like for like, in the hope of finding a tenant to pay premium office rates, when offices per-se, are just a little bit last year.

Chairman’s Annual Report 2024
Click on the image to open the pdf

Attached is this year’s Chairman’s Annual Report, reviewing the key activities of the Society, plus a look at emerging trends in Hammersmith.

Subjects include:

• Royal Masonic Hospital
• Earls Court
• Purpose-Built Student Accommodation (PBSA)
  • 181 Talgarth Road, M&S & 2 Queen Caroline St.
• Town Centre Masterplan / SPD
• Transport
  • Hammersmith Bridge
  • Roundabout consultations
• The Society
  • Prof. Hans Haenlein’s retirement
  • Committee changes & recruitment
  • Hammersmith Weekly

The agenda, accounts and other AGM information are on the dedicated 2024 AGM page.

Goldhawk Road would have been an attractive boulevard in its day: at the Shepherds Bush end,  a wide street lined with terraced housing, shops at ground level, pubs on every corner, changing as you travel west, to the more sedate, semi-detached villas with front gardens – gardens which were later cut short to make way for a road widening which never took place. Over the years, development has eroded this street consistency but the distinctive scale and style remains.

190-194 Goldhawk Road

On the north side, near the Paddenswick Road roundabout, there are proposals for residential redevelopment on an unusual site at 190-194 Goldhawk Road,  next to the 1930’s style Melville Court flats, a site with a wide frontage and stretching back some 140 metres to the Hammersmith Academy at the rear. The development proposals include a 6-storey block on Goldhawk Road, with 24 flats (50% affordable) and a ground floor commercial unit, and a 2-storey mews terrace of 12 houses at the rear.

Apart from the penthouse, the scale of the front block sits comfortably in its street setting, but the street frontage, with its dominant projecting balconies and pronounced banding, would bring a heavy, dominant presence, out of harmony with the street and belittling the more reticent balconied façade of Melville Court next door. The penthouse proposed for the roof of the block is wholly out of place, its height and its awkward projecting roof an alien feature in the Goldhawk Road streetscape. 

190-194 Goldhawk Road Mews Houses

At ground level a gated access-way under the block leads to the mews housing behind, where you arrive in a more domestic, private world. This is an ingenious design, making  the most of a difficult site, and creating an attractive backwater tucked away from the busy road. The layout is very compact, leading to one or two shortcomings which deserve further consideration:  there appears to be no access to the houses for delivery/removal vehicles, and there is little outdoor recreation space for children or adults – and if there is to be reliance on proximity to public parks, a development contribution should be included towards parks maintenance; noise from comings and goings at the front of the houses is likely to disturb the private gardens of Cathnor Road very close by.

Nomination for a Wooden Spoon, 2024

Planting at 181 Talgarth Road – the new Premier Inn and PBSA, still under construction

181 Talgarth Road border planting

181 Talgarth Road Premier Inn planting

The small bed which is the first thing you see as you arrive at the Premier Inn from Hammersmith underground station is almost bare, and compares especially badly after the very good planting at The Ark next door.

The planters to mask the new building from the houses in Margravine Road are nearly dead and planted in what looks like builders rubble not compost, which makes it unsurprising that they won’t grow.

Royal Masonic Hospital Block A, as proposed

We’ve reported on progress of this substantial development three times over the last two years; the plans are now complete and public, with 385 documents under planning reference 2023/03129/FUL. We’ve been in regular contact with the developers and attended meetings, as have the immediately neighbouring residents, and groups including Residents Associations either side – Ravenscourt Square – and our affiliate in Ravenscourt Gardens RA. These public consultations are summarised in the proposal’s Statement of Community Engagement on the planning portal.

We’ve said publicly many times that rescuing and repurposing this Grade II* set of hospital buildings is most welcome, but as usual, not at any cost. We review the proposal in that mindset.  On the plus side, it’s a relatively sensitive proposal without the usual gross overbuilding we see in almost every other development. The team has engaged widely and openly with interested community groups, and many of our concerns have been considered and several addressed in the plans now proposed.

We welcome the refurbishment of this precious building, and appreciate the care that has been taken in the design of the alterations necessary for the new residential use; however we still have some significant concerns, most of which have been expressed in previous updates and are summarised as follows:

• In conservation terms, there remain significant concerns over the inappropriate glass podiums over Block A as pictured above. These have been tamed and improved since originally proposed, but there’s no getting away from the fact that there’s no actual use proposed for Block A, other than as an entrance, so these are strictly unnecessary additions without a clear public benefit. The NPPF sets the criteria for such interventions on such listed buildings, as we, Friends of Ravenscourt Park and the Historic Buildings Group have said before, this remains unaddressed. The Design and Access Statement uses an inappropriate combination of the council’s industrial strategy and an apparent inability to subdivide the heritage rooms as reasoning for their creation.

• Continued →

The council has reworked several pieces of longstanding planning work, and is asking for feedback from you in a series of consultations – details in our diary. We’ve been keen to progress this matter for a while, and it’s good to see new activity. Firstly we should set the historical context, to better understand how we got here, what’s new, and not so new.

2015: Town Centre Working Party supports “West London Link” vision/Flyunder

Longstanding members will recall the 2008 Flyunder proposals that were developed originally by the West London Link group of architects and Hammersmith BID, including our former chairman Tom Ryland as a leading light, and then presented to the London Festival of Architecture that year. A significant part of that plan involved a reworking of Hammersmith to face more towards the river, by removing the awkward A4 spur road to the Broadway (seen above), and connecting King Street to St Paul’s Church, creating a much better and more identifiable ‘centre’. The flyunder would have been funded by building over what is now the A4, linking the roads cut in the 1950’s. This website maintains a series of articles under the flyunder tag, that details some of this work, along with the WLL website above which includes a detailed archive and feasibility study from the time.

Flyunder as proposed in 2008

The potential money ran out fairly spectacularly a year later when the finance industry melted down, but the whole issue had its first revival in 2011 when the flyover closed and was thought to be doomed. However the 2012 Olympics came to the rescue, because, as those imbued in the dark arts of Olympic transport will know, there are very strict maxima laid down for journey times between Olympic venues, no doubt causing the Parisians sleepless nights ahead of this year’s games. Without a flyover, the time to the western venues such as the rowing in Eton would be easily exceeded. That logic led to the special Olympic Travel Lanes, of which there is still the odd vestige if you know where to look. The flyover, as a piece of critical Olympic transport infrastructure, was patched up quicker than you can say ‘Hammersmith Bridge’, and then said to be good for about another fifty or sixty years.

The Hammersmith Residents Working Party was an early version of what came to be called resident-led commissions, which produced the Grimshaw report of 2019 addressing the central Hammersmith regeneration area. Sadly due to the range of topics covered and the divergent nature of the competing demands and constraints, the HRWP couldn’t agree the outcomes in the report and it was never adopted as a Town Centre Supplementary Planning Document as intended.

Hammersmith Study Group: Exhibition: Ravenscourt Park (1970)

There should of course be an obvious answer to the question of what constitutes a park. Summer’s faded into a distant memory, so it’s a good time to take stock, with a season of site visits, reviews of virtual CGI, and actual wooden models of new developments in full swing, showing the newly alluring sunlit ‘park’ images, here in our mid-winter. So far, these suggest that many a developer has rather different idea to us, but perhaps it’s just a naming thing.

Celebrating our parks

Without even considering Wormwood Scrubs, we have several wonderful parks in H&F, the largest of which – Ravenscourt and Bishop’s Parks – provide for almost every conceivable outdoor leisure need, even including exhibitions and Laser shows. From basketball nets in the north to a paddling pool in south, taking in sufficient space to play several team games – of football or cricket – in the middle, tennis courts, toddlers playgrounds, dog exercise areas north and south, popular all-weather football pitches adjacent, and greenhouses and community gardening alongside.  Even a renovated and listed Tea House.  And that’s just Ravenscourt Park. 

Beckett Wharf park

Bishop’s Park has a Grade I listed palace adjacent, the river and riverwalk too.  This gives us a pretty comprehensive idea of the purposes of a park.  We even have possibly the world’s smallest park, Beckett Wharf Park, between the bridge and Riverside Studios. One of our members has recently worked with Kier Construction to renovate it as part of a community contribution.

Ravenscourt Park, November 2023

The Open Spaces Society, to which we’re affiliated, noted recently that parks are under unprecedented pressure from commercial activities, and we see a little of that here with fairs, concerts and so on, but those are modest by comparison with say, Hyde Park, where a good part is cordoned off for most of the summer for the huge ‘BST’ outdoor concerts. Even so, some damage occurs as the photo adjacent shows.

Lewis Cubitt park

New parks

Perhaps we’ll get a better feel for the modern take on a ‘park’ or open space by looking at recent developments? Kings Cross seems a reasonable place to start, with the possibility to do what it likes with public spaces and presumably with few budgetary constraints. The ‘park’ shown adjacent is about the size of a communal garden of the type you might find in Notting Hill, the difference being that this is expected to be shared by a thousand or more people, the original by perhaps a hundred or two. There is perhaps no coincidence that the name of this example is connected to one of the great 18th century builders, Cubitt, rather than a name we might choose, say, Capability Brown.

A review of some proposed new developments we’ve looked at might help.  We don’t have to go far for CGI proposals, and to compare then with some recently built. Mayoral Opportunity Areas, notably Old Oak and it’s environs provide good hunting grounds, in addition to those actually in the borough.  The evidence suggests that developers, rather than producing fanciful CGI’s, might perhaps go and visit some of the many Victorian and Edwardian parks around us to see what they do, and what their public values might reasonably look like.

Earls Court: CGI proposed ‘park’

Westfield Residential: CGI (under construction)

The Grand Union (Alperton – 2023)

The Grand Union (Alperton – 2023)

HS2 Old Oak CGI ‘Parkland’

Original CGI for ‘Old Oak park’

Which one of these new developments has the space to play a team game of some sort or an individual game of tennis? Or any of the other activities listed above? Perhaps one.

Increasing physical activity must be a central part of everything we do

Shepherds Bush Market proposal

The council held a planning committee meeting on 5th December, as noted in our Hammersmith Weekly email, with the majority of the agenda devoted to the market redevelopment proposal. Officers have recommended consent.

After a short speech by one objector, following on from a rather longer exposition of the proposal by the planning officer and daylight consultant, the meeting was spectacularly derailed by protesters related to a group called ‘Protect Shepherd’s Bush Market’, and then cancelled.

We first engaged with the developers in October 2020, and most of the committee has been to one or more of the four exhibitions in various locations in the market over the last three years. The development hasn’t changed significantly over this time, it was born as a large set of buildings, somewhat awkwardly dropped into the Old Laundry Yard. We made our observations public back in April.

We followed up with a letter to the planners in August when the plans had been published and we’d reviewed them, detailing a significant number of issues that need to be addressed before any consideration of consent, these being:

• CGI views: roof plant enclosures/29 Pennard outlook after dark/views with the site
• Roof plant enclosure on HS6 diagram
• Mitigation of intrusion on Pennard Road houses
• Daylight conditions in the Market area
• Concrete panels finish
• Playground provision
• Individuality of stalls
• Market paving
• Damp-proofing railway arches
• Landscape maintenance
• Design of passage at 42 Goldhawk Road
• Independent scrutiny of daylight report.

We were pleased to hear the independent daylight specialist’s review at the start of the planning meeting, addressing one of the concerns. This shows that there are some daylight issues, but they appear fairly modest for neighbours. However one or two locations will be significantly affected in and around Pennard Mansions, and mitigation needs to be provided, in addition to proper consideration of the likely limited daylight in the market, due to the size of the proposed overshadowing building – point 4. The meeting ended abruptly before we’d heard answers to the other equally important issues that we’d raised.