Blackheath car park up for sale again
Greenwich Council are auctioning off a Blackheath car park after postponing an initial attempt.
The site on Old Dover Road has a guide price of £500,000 after an auction last December was pulled.
Greenwich previously sold a car park in in Plumstead for £1.4 million. That car park had seen a fair amount of money spent on it shortly before the sale as part of a £5.2 million Plumstead town centre “Good Growth” improvement project. Since that sale newly installed landscaping on the site has not been maintained and it’s a bit of an eyesore.
Greenwich claimed few were using the car parks though they rarely ever checked for tickets so it was common knowledge locally that free parking was pretty much guaranteed.
That whole town centre improvement project was pretty odd. Much of the funds went on external consultants – which Labour councillors themselves questioned – while some went on the car park which was sold shortly thereafter and other sums were supposed to be spent on the former Plumstead power station building.
One idea was for a market before that was dropped.
Then the idea was to carry out improvements for Mo-Sys to move though that collapsed and the money was never spent.
Prior sales
Most of these sales of various public assets be it buildings or land bring in short-term funds but rarely work out over the long term.
To give one example, Greenwich sold Riverside House in Woolwich a decade ago. Since then various applications for conversion of the block into housing under new owners have been and gone, all while the number of homeless households the council are legally obliged to house has risen rapidly and now stands above 2,000.
After numerous conversion plans for the existing building went in with no action ever undertaken a more substantial plan featuring a rooftop extension gained approval. But what do you know, that’s now seeing another revision. Now a decade and counting of no housing ever arriving under the private owners.
If Greenwich had converted it to housing a decade ago, either themselves either directly or via Meridian Home Start, millions would have been saved in temporary housing costs by utilising the building rather than paying private landlords, hotels and B&Bs.
The sale of the car park could affect neighbouring businessess in the area as some road restrictions apply on Old Divet Road at certain times of the day.
Will be interesting to see if any planning petmissiom will be granted for the site? If yes what could be buit on the site as it is not very wide. Some small flats or bedsits possibly?
I agree with you Graham. The loss of tbe car will affect neighbouring small bysinesses aleeady struggling with higjh business rates and road/parking restrictions.
If it was to become a privately run car park the charges would be astronomical.(sorry for spelling).
I too could only see a small shop with possinly small one bedroom flats or self contained bedsits above the retail/comnercial space.
If the site was bigger tbe area could do witb another supermarket to complinent N&S Food Hall.
I agree with you Graham. The loss of tbe car will affect neighbouring small bysinesses aleeady struggling with higjh business rates and road/parking restrictions.
If it was to become a privately run car park the charges would be astronomical.(sorry for spelling).
I too could only see a small shop with possinly small one bedroom flats or self contained bedsits above the retail/comnercial space.
If the site was bigger tbe area could do witb another supermarket to complinent M&S Food Hall.
Ere are I park there n it means I aint goin to shop so much at the Standard. I spend loss of tenners to elp them shops so gettin rid aint goin to elp them n thass all there is to it on ere.
I would be surprised if permission was granted to build anything since it would block ‘light and ‘air’ to the residences behind the wall. I would certainly expect there to be strong objections to any building for whatever use.