First Woolwich waterfront tower out of six completes
The first tower of an eventual six at a plot on the Royal Arsenal is now all but externally complete.
A second tower is more than half complete and will have a different colour scheme, as covered earlier this month.
Berkeley Homes have named this area of development West Quay. Basement works on towers three and four appear complete and work is ready to go. That’s been the case for some time and presumably Berkeley Homes will commence when the first towers are complete.
That then leaves preparatory ground works on the last two towers before they rise – which is a couple of years off at best. All six are around the same height.
Below you can see the original tower plan for what was Waterfront leisure centre’s car park:
It’s now evolved into this:
Commercial space is located at street level on the first tower to complete:
The ground floor is pretty squat. Ground floor commercial space on towers is almost always better when double height. I mean, who is really gong to enjoy that first floor balcony?
It’s also quite odd they’ve placed it facing a roundabout while Thames-facing facades have no active frontage it appears, with a blank wall facing the river hiding bin stores and parking.
These blocks are some of the last on the Royal Arsenal site under Berkeley Homes’ ownership. All that’s left are blocks partly on the temporary Maribor Park.
There are few public realm improvements nearby, with a vehicle dominated road seeing minimal changes:
On my visit the opposite road saw one of two lanes blocked by parked vehicles and buses waiting at a bus stand. There’s scope to improve this area but as yet not taken.
Other towers
These aren’t the only riverside towers in Woolwich rising at the moment. A few hundred metres away are Mast Quay towers which I covered last week.
The tallest block will be around 22 floors in height:
