• MAJOR property developers, Hines, with US$94.6billion of assets under management, own, among many other things, the freehold of 2-4 Dean Street, the site of the busy Tesco supermarket.

Hines applied to Westminster City Council last year for permission to demolish the building and change the use from the current large ground-floor retail unit to a restaurant plus a large foyer for new “premium” offices above.

The application is consistent with plans that were in gestation well before the Covid-19 pandemic and seemingly unaffected by it.

The art deco 1920s building at 7 Soho Square, adjacent to the Grade II* French Protestant Church, would also be demolished to be replaced with new premium offices.

Hines have said the plans: “…would see the creation of a highly sustainable and vibrant Soho building providing world class office space and ground floor retail uses anchored around a new 21st Century Bazaar concept”.

The Soho Society disagrees.

We believe that the demolition and rebuild will release yet more unsustainable amounts of CO2 and deliver office and restaurant spaces to an area already over-served by such uses.

Despite extensive engagement we still don’t understand what is meant by a “21st Century Bazaar concept”.

We remain of the view that the claimed community uses of the “Bazaar concept” are highly unlikely to turn into anything useful for the community.

The current supermarket, which we would lose if the application is granted, on the other hand remains busy and popular with the local community including both residents and workers.

City council planning officers have been persuaded to support the application despite:

— a petition signed by 150 local residents last year seeking retention of Soho’s main supermarket, many saying it is for them an irreplaceable facility which they rely on;

— the fact that many Soho offices remain vacant; and

— the fact that there are a number of unused restaurant locations in Soho, one example being the former site of Princi on Wardour Street, only a matter of yards away from the proposed development, which has been vacant for two years or more.

Meanwhile, and also somewhat at odds with the officers’ approach, the new Labour administration at WCC have recently declared an “ecological emergency which recognises the global ecological emergency and the local impact this has on the communities and businesses we serve, expanding on the climate emergency declared in 2019”.

Speculatively demolishing and rebuilding large plots in Soho is unlikely to avoid the ongoing climate emergency, rather the opposite.

One hopes that members of the planning committee that has to make the final decision on this on October 17, see through all this more robustly.

If you want to assist the committee in its deliberations you can email the planning officer (pogie@westminster.gov.uk Reference 23/00484/ FULL) until October 16 or apply to speak at the hearing on October 17 at 6.30pm www.westminster.gov.uk/planning-committee

If you are permitted to speak at the hearing, like other objectors, you will get three minutes to explain your concerns to the committee.

TIM LORD
Chair, The Soho Society