Crumbling Woolwich car park to see repairs at cost of £8 million
A Woolwich town centre car park is to see £8 million in repairs undertaken by Greenwich Council.
The structure on Calderwood Street sees parking above Sainsbury’s with upper floors used by residents of Vista House – a former office block next door converted to residential usage.
Concrete chunks have been falling off the car park for some time as photos taken from upper floors show.
Residents of neighbouring Vista House are likely to need to stump up some of the cost, with the council stating:
“Noted that the head lessee of the top 3 floors of the car park, Vista Building Ltd, may choose to pass on their proportion of the car park remediation costs, to those flat owners of the adjoining residential apartment block, who sublease car parking spaces from them.”
The car park has long been a point of contention for residents within the block formerly homes to Morgan Grampian.
Car park users living next door have seen steep increases in charges over recent years.
Poor condition
Concrete falling off the structure isn’t the only problem. The entire car park is neglected and unappealing – and it’s been that way for decades.
It’s been run down for as long as I can remember (30 years) and often scarcely used.
Greenwich Council’s Site Allocation Strategy from 2021 which is supposed to determine the future of land across the borough – and around five years in the making – had designated the site as one suitable for mixed-use redevelopment with housing.
This plan appears to put the blockers on that within the next 15 years despite a severe housing crises in the borough at vast cost to the council.
Ideas for temporary uses of the Woolwich car park seen some years ago stated uses including “food and drink, workspace and/or community uses” which hasn’t come to pass.
The extract seen above stated the top two floors are in use by Vista residents while this latest report states three.
Then again that report on future land changes was riddled with errors including, for example, claiming Crossrail (as it was then) owned the BT phone exchange beside Abbey Wood station. It also thought Railtrack still exited 19 years after it ceased to be.
Other issues include stating the Cross Quarter development in Abbey Wood (featuring a Sainsbury’s) was complete. It wasn’t, as only stage one ever completed. Stage two has never commenced and sat under Peabody control for a decade without a single plan drawn up let alone submitted.
Dangers
The latest report on repair work states: “Not carrying out the works to this building causes significant risk of further concrete breaking off.
“This, being a public building, would put users at risk of injury and/ or property damage to cars etc.
“The works we are proposing eliminates this risk by removing all damaged concrete and reinstating damaged areas.
“Doing nothing would result in the car park falling into disrepair and likely having to shut due to safety concerns, it would also need full scaffold wrapping to prevent concrete falling. All of which will cost significant sums of money and cause major disruption to the Woolwich town centre.”
However the building has been crumbling and seen evident and extensive problems for years.
More than fiver years ago they were considering demolition. Nothing happened and then in 2023 refurbishment was considered.
Given their own planning documents drawn up some years ago stated it was suitable for mixed-use development it seems the chance to push for such a project wasn’t taken and now the cash-strapped authority and residents face a multi-million pound bill.
Given it’s poor and declining condition, scarce usage, designation for redevelopment and council policies to reduce car usage, a failure to adopt a plan for many years before we got to this point has cost big.
Making things trickier was the decision to lease out floors for resident usage but there’s no sign any attempt has been made to enter discussions with Vista Building Ltd to work towards redevelopment.
Lifts
Both lifts will also need full replacement according to the report otherwise they’d fail within 12-24 months.
Given the scope of problems and the range of fixes required, a warning sign appears in the report.
“It is difficult to precisely estimate the cost of the works because the scope of the repairs will develop as the work is undertaken and the structure exposed”.
In total 65 per cent of costs will be met by Greenwich Council.
Ultimately what we see now is a cash-strapped council that is making substantial cuts elsewhere being forced to spend substantia costs – that could grow substantially. Not pursuing redevelopment opportunities drawn up years ago to improve this part of town has caused issues down the line – and given the evident decline of the building for many years it can hardly be a surprise.
Residents next door are also likely to need to stump up steep costs to boot. It makes that decision to lease upper floors to Vista Building Ltd appear to be a major mistake.
This is good news.
The car park is in urgent need of total upgrading.. It is in a poor state of repair and the lifts are dirty and smell. Lighting also needs to be improved.
Labour voter all my life but I’m honestly getting so fed up with this Labour council making poor decision after poor decision, whilst taxes rise as services decline. Common sense says this car park should be demolished, not allowed to become another Woolwich money pit.
It’s not good news Graham. Good news would be knock the ugly old thing down and build new shops, new homes and bring more people to this part of town which in turn helps the other shops. Now it’ll swallow many millions and what’s the odds that £8m cost rockets up?
And we know it’ll fall apart to rack and ruin when work completes. The lifts will fail and more money shoved into it. No one parks there anyway as the council let Tesco build a massive car park with free parking in the town centre.
I would rather see the car park demolished and a larger Sainsburys store built witb new homes above. Sadly this is not going to happen anytime soon. So it is better to make the car park safe as is crumbling in places.
Getting rid of the current Labour administration on Greenwich Council we may then see some real change and vision in the Borough. Including new developments on the site of the old multi storey car park.