The Changing face of West End Lane

Local resident and campaigner Gio Spinella charts the changing face of West End Lane.

When I first moved to West Hampstead back in 1997 the gentrification process although underway had not yet reached its apogee. What is now a Nando’s was a Jenny Burger. What is now the Bombay Bicycle Club was first a KFC and then a Pizza Hut. An independent record shop, selling amongst other things second hand CDs stood where nowadays there is an estate agent (and in my immediately-post-student days when music was still one of the key topics of my conversation, any place that sold second hand CDs was a palace in my eyes). The Wine Bar at the corner of Iverson and West End Lane was yet to become a Costa Coffee and the Princess Alice was an Irish pub with live Celtic music every Sunday. And a butchers’ was part of the regular economy.

These shops are all gone now, replaced by cafés, organic shops, tapas bars and dozens of estate agents. And while I will never regret the arrival of Sarracino’s (best pizza in North-West London, FACT) I do wish some of the older character of West Hampstead could have been retained, and that West End Lane fell more like the high street of a thriving community and less like a place to have a cappuccino or a glass of wine before going elsewhere to buy all the necessities that make up our daily lives.

But neighbourhoods change, that is a sign of growth and vitality. But I don’t know if all West Hampstead residents are prepared for the changes that are coming to West End Lane in the not so distant future.

Between 1000 and 2000 new homes are meant to be built in West Hampstead starting from 2010 (depending on whether you look at the London Plan or Camden Council’s Local Development Framework) along with a major redesigning of the streets and transport connections.

The areas affected will be 156 West End Lane, 187-199 West End Lane, Blackburn Road, possibly the O2 centre parking lot and the corner of West End Lane and Iverson Road.

156 West End Lane is where the DSS Offices are, and the shop that sells bathroom fixtures. This block will be torn down and replaced with a new construction that will be a combination of residential, commercial and community uses. The same will apply to 183-199 West End Lane- for your reference this is the line of shops that include Peppercorn (the natural food store), Capital Hire and the small IT/computer shop. Again, the destination of the new constructions will be the same, commercial, residential and community.

Blackburn Road will see the currently vacant lot which used to be a car show-room turned into a mixture of workshops and student lodgings. Exactly what kind of workshops is unclear but I will be interested in seeing what is suggested.

Going further east, the O2 car park is being eyed enviously by the Council. Now personally I don’t see how the families who do their weekly shopping are going to cope without the car park. Anybody who does their shopping on a Saturday or Sunday knows how packed this car park can get. Even if the Council did want to take that space, would Sainsbury’s and Homebase look favourably at the sudden erection of a new construction between them? The only way that could conceivably work is if they brought the Homebase forward so that it is directly in front of the Sainsbury’s, create an underground parking lot and build over the old Homebase lot. If that is even remotely feasible.

Carrying on up West End Lane, the two shops at the corner of Iverson and West End Lane (the jewellers and the Basket Grill, the first place I ever had a kebab- give me a break, I did my uni in Italy where we had pizza instead) are going to be torn down and that whole junction is going to be enlarged to allow easier access for traffic and the commuters who every morning and afternoon stream in their thousands between the Thameslink and the Tube station. That Interchange has been one of the most important issues in West Hampstead for a long time now, as local and national authorities of all colours and stripes have wanted to physically connect the three stations that make West Hampstead the transport hub of north-west London. That physical connection is unlikely but steps are being taken to ameliorate the train lines. This at least is the explanation (or should I say excuse?) that TFL are using to justify the repeated tube closures that have started cutting off West Hampstead on the week-ends. It’s also the explanation of the new Iverson Road ticket office for the Thameslink. One good thing to come of the Iverson Road junction work is the inclusion, in the projects, of reasonable pavement widths, something that is crucial considering all the foot-traffic that goes on daily between 7 and 9 AM and 4 and 7 PM. Credit where credit is due, the WHAT group (West Hampstead Amenities and Travel) played an important role in that.

Turning left off West End Lane into Mill Lane, Emmanuel School is going to kick off its long-anticipated expansion, spreading out into the Mill Lane Open Space- an option they have held for some 40 years now. The Sington Day Care centre for children will be given a temporary location at the Broomsleigh Community Centre- more on that below- until they are relocated permanently to a new development in Fortune Green- due for September 2011.

Carrying on further down Mill Lane, 60-62 where the West Hampstead Community centre once stood has been sold so will be at some point redeveloped. With the money obtained from that sale, Camden have purchased the Broomsleigh Community Centre, which is even now going through renovations and changes to bring it up to code. Even further down Mill Lane, on number 1, a new building, with 40 flats and 20 car spaces is going to be built.

South of Mill Lane, Maygrove Road is facing some changes with proposals for a half-way house. And going further north-west, to the parts that think they are actually more Cricklewood than Camden, the Brent Cross/Cricklewood development looms.

From all this, it’s safe to say, West Hampstead is changing. But what kind of change is coming and how will it impact the area.

From the outset it must be clear that any new housing projects that involve the Council will have a portion of social housing included. This isn’t a bad thing and social housing doesn’t have to be grim. Brent Council have been pushing forward an extensive regeneration project for council housing, building new constructions that have managed to combine its social mission with an aesthetic appeal. But West Hampstead residents will have to keep an eye on any proposed design to avoid a return to the Stalinist cement Lego blocks that have blighted so many parts of London. Whilst obviously we can’t expect ornate baroque decorations and gazebos in gardens, a design that combines utility with visual appeal is what is needed.

What West Hampstead residents won’t want is this new social housing to become a dumping ground for tenants who have been evicted or deemed undesirable from other estates. Many estates have these, disruptive individuals who by their anti-social behaviour and criminal activities bring the entire estate into disrepute. Obviously everybody has to be judged on their individual behaviour and everyone is entitled to a second chance but the surest way to turn social housing into sink holes is by filling it with people who have a track-record of disruptive and hostile behaviour. Indeed, the difficulties that most council tenants have in ridding their blocks of these elements is one of the greatest hurdles in any attempt to turn an estate into a community.

The greater population is going to put a strain on local services. Traffic and congestion, already bad on West End Lane is going to get much much worse, and most likely on a permanent basis: the construction work that is going to be turning vast parts of West Hampstead into construction sites are going to inevitably have an effect on traffic, as lorries move in an out, skips cover parts of the pavement and construction crews will bring in their machinery, including probably cranes and cement mixers. And even once the construction crews leave, the number of new inhabitants will mean bigger queues for buses and tubes and trains. And a percentage of people will have cars, with all the strain on parking -that already has reached desperate levels in most cases- this will entail. Most new construction will have taken cars into account, but still the increased traffic will mean, if nothing else, more CO2 in the local air.

Social services will need a much stronger presence. The move of the Safer Neighbourhood Team offices to further down West End Lane will allow local police to keep a closer eye on the new construction- something they couldn’t do as easily based in Hillfield Road. But the Housing Services that were based there are going to need a new location, one close to the people they are going to be serving. There were rumours that Camden wanted to centralise everything on Euston but these proposals should be rejected, if only for the difficulty of access that elderly, people with disabilities or parents with children will encounter.

And then of course there will be local amenities and shops. A significant number of stores south of the Thameslink station are going to go, but those that remain and those that come will be facing some interesting opportunities. A greater number of local residents will automatically spell more money for most shops- or should anyway. The mix of new residents is going to be comprised of young urban professionals, people in social housing and students. These three groups will have different and overlapping requirements but not necessarily the same. Young urban professionals (we called them yuppies in the 80s) will have more disposable income and a desire to spend it on a higher proportion of luxury items and finer foods. People in social housing are likely to have less disposable income and be in many respects more price conscious. Students- as students everywhere- will be living on budgets fixed by their grants their loans and in many cases their parents but within those budgets will look to save money on the staple goods so that they can have more disposable cash for social activities.

The Blackburn Road student lodgings will be situated between Finchley Road and West End Lane so they will have access to both high streets and their amenities but it’s safe to assume that any fast food company will try to establish new franchises in West Hampstead. And the warmth of West End Lane will probably win out over the relative coldness of Finchley Road. So eateries of all kind will want to cater for a smaller budget. And it’s safe to assume other shops will appear, perhaps even a return of those record shops I bemoaned earlier on. And if I were a LIDL location scout, I’d be planting a flag in one of the new developments.

West Hampstead has always been in many ways a situated along the social fault-line. The wealth flowing down from Hampstead Town and Frognal and Fitzjohns encounters the less glamorous and more restrained realities pushing up from Kilburn along West End Lane. This is also one of explanations for the higher crime rates in West Hampstead with burglary and car vehicle theft being so prominent. It’s safe to assume that this mix will remain a permanent feature. Should we expect increased anti-social behaviour, if only from drunken students?

There is plenty here to be concerned about and to keep West Hampstead as a whole busy. Residents are going to have to do all that we can to ensure that the character of our area be preserved as much as possible, and where the changes are inevitable, that they are done with a sense of community and cohesiveness.