Regeneration Rip Off @ The Elephant Sat 19th July: Walk, Sound, Films

SATURDAY 19th JULY: All day Regeneration Rip-Off at The Elephant

ANTI-GENTRIFICATION WALK: 1pm at 56a Infoshop,
56 Crampton St, Walworth SE17. Leaves 1.30pm

• This will be another one of our local walks round the area looking at different sites, developments and characters around the local ‘regeneration’ of the area. We decided not to go over old ground too much (Strata, Heygate etc) but to focus the walk on the new sites – Shopping Centre, One The Elephant, Artworks Box Park, The Signal Building, Eileen House, Newington Causeway Peabody sites and many many more.

In this walk we will ask ‘who benefits?’. With this in mind, we will talk about that very issue – if the local community is not benefiting as promised, which companies and which individuals are benefiting. We will also be looking at how regeneration attempts to place itself on top of people’s local life and history and pretend it was never there.

Intended as a community conversation rather than just us lot going on about it all, please bring your stories, experiences, knowledge, gossip etc and share as we walk, stop and talk.

‘ELEPHANT ENDANGERED’: Outside 56a Infoshop,
56 Crampton St, Walworth SE17 from 4 -6pm

• “Elephant Endangered is a sonic investigation into community and gentrification in the London neighbourhood of Walworth.  The area has been subject to several contentious ‘regeneration’ schemes that have already caused the loss of 1100 socially rented homes of the Heygate Estate.  Elephant Endangered is made up of the many  sounds of the area which are overlaid with conversations had with neighbours, friends, and longstanding residents.  The work is set to continue with new sounds and voices being added through continued dialogues, events, and activities in the community”.

PUBLIC HOUSING UNDER THREAT FILMS:
56a Infoshop, 56 Crampton St, Walworth SE17 from 7pm

• We are pleased to be showing locally a stones throw from Heygate site, the excellent new film ‘Concrete Heart Land‘:
“Concrete Heart Land exposes the social cleansing of the Heygate Estate in Elephant and Castle, South London. It marks the moment that the estate was finally lost as social housing to make way for an unjust ‘regeneration’ scheme. Assembled from 12 years of archive materials the film charts the struggles of the local community to keep their homes, stay living in the area, and maintain communal benefits in the face of the advance of this now notorious ‘urban redevelopment programme’. Throughout the film we hear the community engaging in some of the crucial battles with elected officials, planners, and barristers in municipal planning meetings, public enquiries, and interviews”.

We will also be showing the new film about residents struggles to save their homes at Cressingham Gardens, “Homes under the Sledgehammer’:
“The film is directed by Sanda Kolar and includes several of the estate’s residents speaking about their experiences of life on the estate. The overwhelming  feeling the film projects is that of community spirit amongst the residents. Nicholas Greaves, Cressingham Gardens Residents’ Chair, said: “It seemed like a jewel in Lambeth’s crown of estates, so it seemed crazy to me that you would want to demolish it.”

Also up is ‘9 Stories In Brixton‘:
“9 Stories in Brixton is a tale about nine residents who live in and around The Guinness Trust estate in heart of Brixton. Earmarked for redevelopment for a number of years, the landlords are now proposing to demolish the estate and rebuild the blocks nine stories high, thereby increasing the capacity of the estate by 30%.  A group of concerned tenants, held meetings to discuss estate issues, and have subsequently endured attempts by the landlords to set up a rival tenants association”.

Plus other short films on housing and other topics that take our fancy. If you have any short films pertinent to the night’s screenings, please bring on USB stick!

See you there on the 19th!

Regeneration Seeks Amnesia (1): The Artworks

SUMMARY: Public park taken away then given back under false pretences in the guise of community use – Southwark Council, The Artworks, Lend Lease.

Yes, it’s another long post ahead!

Here at Southwark Notes mansions, we have been following the unbelievable saga of the planned The Artworks ‘arts and creative enterprise community‘ for Walworth with er….disbelief. Long before the large yellow and green ex-shipping containers arrived at the old Shell Garage site in front of Swanbourne block of Heygate Estate, long before before the invention of the Flat White coffee and probably long before even Picasso died. Well it does seem that long to us as Artworks has been rumoured, planned, delivered, amended, delayed and now hoping to move to a new site.

We have a lot of things to say on this proposed Lego-land labyrinth of creative types and market-as-theme park for urban adventuring amongst the, by-now everywhere, ‘Pop-Up’ Street Food places. (A fellow traveler of ours describes these places as ‘Throw-Up shops’!). We are also wondering whether Artworks are renting the land from the Council and on what sort of lease? However, we are gonna set those opinions aside as we prefer to begin our first exploration of what we are calling Regeneration Seeks Amnesia.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN WALWORTH and ELEPHANT RD’s
When the Heygate Estate was almost finally cleared of residents, some local people began muttering about how the site itself should not be just put behind hoardings for years and years. As the land is still publicly owned those trees and garden areas are still considered ours, so the public spaces within and some of the buildings should be use for temporary benefits to continue to offer something to local residents rather than being a walled off non-space that waits on the developers profits.

There was even a day long gathering organised by Elephant Amenity Network of local folks to discuss and plan what sort of interim uses they wanted to push The Council and developers for. A large report of the days wishes and desires was published with an emphasis on people being able to still both enjoy the green spaces of the estate and also to focus on future gardening, food growing, space for community gatherings, space for creative endeavours, space for sports and recreation and even a call to maintain short life housing within the estate if the flats were to be empty for another 2 or three or more years.

It must be said that despite this engaged and positive forward thinking, the battle with The Council and Lend Lease for temporary uses has not resulted in many real gains. There is the Mobile Gardeners project on Wansey St and there is also the giving over of the old Doctors Surgery on Heygate to Reuben Powell, a local artist.  The battle for continued access to the lovely Rose Garden is still a sore point and the new fencing-off of the estate has meant access to the community pond, poly-tunnel, allotments, occasional Heygate cinema and growing areas has been stopped.

HAS THE WORD ‘ART’ IN IT SO MUST BE GOOD FOR YOU
The proposed Artworks container park scheme was the 3rd item of ‘give’ that Lend Lease had finally committed itself too. Between September 2011 and June 2012 various small meetings and consultations were held to generate interest and discussion on the scheme. It was suggested that the soon to be empty site where the old Shell Garage was on Walworth Rd would be a suitable site for what was dubbed the ‘box park’ (after the trendy container ‘pop-up’ mall in Shoreditch). In May 2012 the Council sought tenders for the scheme and by March 2013 Artworks became the ‘preferred partner‘ to run the scheme at the ex-Shell site. In late March Artworks presented their proposals at a Lend Lease-run Community Forum.

Although such a project needs planning permission and has to be subject to many and varied considerations and conditions stemming from Southwark Planning policies, strangely enough Artworks were able to deliver 48 containers to the site.

You can contrast this un-permitted dumping with the recent flurry of warning notices to named businesses on Walworth Rd who use the pavement for a couple of chairs outside their caff or to display a few wares or two. Bearing in mind the desperate retail crisis facing those traders and the truly independent nature of those small businesses, you’d think the Council would try and support them out rather than getting all heavy and pedantic!

It was a month later when Artworks applied for permission for the ‘Erection of 48 modular units to accommodate business/workspace, retail, markets, cafe/restaurant, gallery, community, and stay-work uses (Use Classes B1, A1 to A5 inclusive, and D1) together with ancillary structures and the change of use of the existing former petrol filling station kiosk to cafe for a temporary period of 5 years’.

The planning application was very loose and free with many of the requirements for such a large development. Artworks argued that as it would be a temporary development community benefit contributions should not be applicable. They were also light in detail on how the Southwark Plan that requires ‘training, employment, childcare facilities, public realm improvements for those with disabilities‘,  and sustainability would be fulfilled as planning obligations as part of their scheme. Submitting a later Addendum to this Planning App, they attempted to flesh out their original plan based on its numerous oversights, missing fulfillments and vagueness. Restating a desire to have the benefits overlooked as their scheme brought no ‘adverse impacts‘ they wrote:

‘The Development provides a number of key temporary benefits to the local community to off-set the need for any planning obligations’.

“This Development provides an opportunity for the regeneration benefits of the wider Heygate Masterplan scheme to be delivered at an early stage in one of the early, and visible, interim uses on the Site”.

Here it is still not actually clear what ‘benefits‘ they are being to the area with this unexpanded statements. Answers on  postcard once again please!

COMMUNITY IS WHATEVER THEY WANT IT TO MEAN REALLY
Around the time of the dumping of the containers, it was clear that the notion of community interim use was slipping slowly away as rumours of the containers becoming ‘Live / Work’ units with rents of £200 per week were starting to be heard locally. The ‘Live / Work’ units were then mutated into Artworks specially invented ‘Stay / Work’ units when they realised that residential studios would trigger an affordable housing requirement of them. Then the whole ‘live in a box and create art’ schtick began to slowly disappear from their promotions in favour again of non-residential studio, retail and market space.

In April 2013, some very switched-on local artists, journalist Paul Coleman and some of Southwark Notes who happened to be passing by, were able to see the containers close up as the developers were inspecting their investment. Keen to show folks around, both the artists and we lot were hardly impressed that a metal box could be a ‘live / work‘ unit for £200 per week despite it having a ‘kitchenette‘. The whole stacking of the containers created a weird and unappealing dingy inner space that didn’t seem conducive to public hanging out or a sense of retail headspace or an inviting market. Also strange was that the mysterious developers who were unwilling to provide any details of who they were beyond names seemed entirely clueless about artists needs space-wise, about the area itself or the history of the Heygate. (See very below for who they are)

The artists were on that day conducting their own cheerful consultation with tea and cakes on what local people thought about the containers and getting them to fill out the official consultation form. Have to say that overall out of about 100 conversations most passersby thought the scheme was a bit useless and also unworkable both as a site and with those rental rates. Paul Coleman wrote a nice piece about this spontaneous site visit.

FROM COMMUNITY USES TO BUSINESS USES
Months later, in September 2013, with nothing happening at the site and still no planning permission yet granted and with very little fanfare other than a dismal Twitter campaign (“Happy Friday people! What’s everyone got planned for tonight?‘ or ‘Good morning people of twitter! We hope you have a great week!!‘*) and some fading A3 posters in a few of the containers, there was an Artworks Tweet bombshell. The whole thing had suddenly gone interstellar.

Yes, the game was well and truly upped when Artworks announced that due to the fire at Cuming Museum next door to their planned site, they would be moving to a new site at Elephant Rd instead to ‘facilitate repairs to the Town Hall that was seriously damaged in the fire‘. This is a somewhat disingenuous statement. Garland Court TRA in Wansey St although not against the scheme had objected to their planning application on the basis of possible noise and lack of proper consideration of public toilets, impact on local views, parking and litter among other things. Lend Lease had also announced a change of the phasing of the Heygate development that meant that the Shell site and environs would no longer be vacant for 5 years. Any road up, the new project now ups the number of containers to 56.

WE DON’T FORGET WHAT WE ALREADY LIVED
Anyhow, after this long starter, we get to the main meal of our disgruntlement which is that we live here, we know what’s going on, we haven’t forgotten what’s happened so far and so we won’t be taken in by the Spin.

What is it about regeneration and in particular, ‘regeneration’ at The Elephant, that attempts to erase what is both in front of our very eyes and what is a trusted series of memories in our heads?

With this attempted amnesia in mind, we say again that the proposed Artworks site at Elephant Rd was the well-used open space that contained a large expanse of grass, large mature trees and a small kids playground. On Sundays, it hosted football between different local Latin American teams. In February 2011, the well-used site was hastily fenced off by Southwark Council without any consultation to enable Oakmayne, the then developers of this long empty site, to function as a extra site compound for the development. This public land was then unaccountably enclosed to facilitate the future building of a private development (that funnily enough contains no social housing). Particularly galling was then how nothing happened and nothing is happening at that site with the proposed Tribeca Sq development. That space, those trees, that football, that community resource has been denied local people for two and half years now at the whims of a arrogant Council and a non-developing developer. No wonder we continue to question when the benefits for all of this regeneration will see something for us long term locals.

So it is even more upsetting and rage-inducing when, once again, with no public further consultation (other than a paper one that is statutory for planning applications), Artworks now seeks to open up a public space that was taken away from us to run what is essentially a private business that then pretends to provide or will provide minimal community uses. Planned rental costs will be: £180 per week  for a 320sq ft container workshop / retail space. Electricity not included. £180 per week, including all bills, except electricity.  Or smaller retail units at £80 per week (64 sq ft). There are also ‘hot desks‘ for £35 a week ‘for businesses whether it be a small company starting out or a large corporation on the go‘. Large corporations are probably about as far away from community interim use as we can imagine it. Will Artworks be renting a few hot desks to junior Lend Lease executives?

So these are not cheap units really ‘predicated on affordability and aimed at business start-ups and incubator units‘ as was set out in their planning application. Comparable space in well-established studio buildings made of bricks and with actual large windows costs considerably less. Long term reputable studio companies such as Space or Acme are offering spaces well cheaper than Artworks (£720 approx) with studios for £300 or £400 a month (although it is not easy to get these). Commercial (non-metal) studios are also available for £500 a month for about 300 sq ft.

ADDING INSULT TO INJURY QUITE NICELY
The fenced-in box park scheme will provide ‘open space within the Development for use by the general public, other than when it may be used for specific and occasional private events‘ so public access remains provisional to the management’s decisions. However, there is one more insult to add to the utter absurdity of the situation. Contained within the new planning application for Artworks at Elephant Rd is the proposal to use the once-public land now turned into a hollowed out community interim use for the siting of a marketing pavilion for Lend Lease:

“7.19    The Development seeks temporary planning permission for 2 modular units to be used as a ‘pavilion’ to house an information centre and marketing suite (Use Class Sui Generis) for Lend Lease.

7.20    The pavilion will be used by Lend Lease to provide a early presence on the wider Heygate Masterplan development site in Elephant and Castle during the initial demolition and construction phases, and a facility for the public to find out further details of the wider Heygate Regeneration and information on the new residential units that are for sale as part of Lend Lease’s Heygate Masterplan, Trafalgar Place, and One The Elephant developments…

7.22    The information centre and marketing suite will have a separate entrance and opening hours to the rest of the Artworks Development and will be managed by Lend Lease.”

Here Lend Lease gains a nice marketing suite to market their new buildings to the undoubtedly investment-happy Buy To Let landlords and the numerous overseas investors that will be snapping up places in Trafalgar Place and One The Elephant. How do you negotiate that one under the notion of community use?

AN ELEPHANT NEVER FORGETS AND OTHER TALES
Here at Southwark Notes palaces we are endlessly critical of the ‘regeneration‘ that we are suffering at The Elephant but it is tiring to feel like we have to do our best to document these abuses and downright cynical behaviour from The Council and developers.We document it in the hope that at some point The Council and the developers might take seriously the fact that local people have a long and deep knowledge of the history of this shameful regeneration project. We have an acute and critical eye for detail when the hype and lies they spread tries to erase from the public mind the losses of council homes, public space and valued communities.

However, in this instance, we base our argument not solely on slagging off how this regeneration is being run or how it is being sold to us as if we have no memory or anything to say on what is plain to see before our eyes. These rip-offs are so blatant yet the Council just spins it’s vile fairy tales in the press as if nothing was wrong or no-one was saying anything other. We also base our concerns on the roots that are local people who have come together repeatedly and put in their precious time to seek that genuine community benefits come to the area. They have put forward serious considered proposals for creative uses, employment chances, health matters and maintaining public spaces. But most of this has been ignored except where it suits the needs or a developer that can easily use a few small and heavily sanctioned projects to talk up it’s own accountability and working with the locals. Yet the battle of the local community with Lend Lease has been one long hard fight to gain very little. If the very first things you finally see getting built from the Lend Lease Masterplan is One The Elephant (starting price £325,000) and some wonky overpriced pseudo-trendy designer retail outlets in a metal box, you probably are wondering where you fit in to all this regeneration lark.

—————————–

CONTAINER PEOPLE MEETS MARKETS PEOPLE DOWNTOWN: ARTWORKS – WHO THEY ARE
We couldn’t resist a bit off simple detective work to understand this seemingly shonky outfit that can get away with no planning permission for the arrival of 48 containers, cannot update it’s own website to say that the project is no longer on Walworth Rd and is able to make deals with The Council to get a new and much better site in the infamous enclosed Elephant Rd Park. All this from essentially a quite small scale and risky business plan.

As we learnt from our long years doing this, business like this (i.e not Lend Lease or St Modwens) is a fairly boring and everyday affair of people knowing other people who can set you up with something or sort you out, go into partnership with etc. Here at Artworks, the Sam Minionis side is a kind of shipping container enthusiast with business connections to a property developing family who have a vague connection to some Oakymayne property thing from way back. He is a big part of the company My Space Pod that seeks to containerise building developments with a passion for re-using shipping boxes. Charlie Fulford is the markets side of things and also more of a property developer with a father who is both a serious market developer (establishing Camden Lock market in 1971 amongst others) and a Professor of Philosophy. What a carry on!

Regeneration Seeks Amnesia Part Two Coming Soon!
Heygate Vacant Possession Secured, Comes With Major Public Art Spectacle

——-

* Our favourite Tweet from Artworks:

We remember how Henry Kissinger signed the orders for the illegal bombing of Cambodia in 1969, a policy that led to an estimated half million civilian deaths. He also had a large hand in the legitimating via US foreign policy of military coups, death squads, disappearances and repression in several Latin American countries. A perfect and creative act and especially sensitive to the Elephant Rd Latin-American community.

(Not) Coming Soon! Walworth Rd ‘vibrant arts quarter’!

Southwark Notes Cultural Front is acting as curator for this. Late submissions, pop-up projects and performances still sought for this exciting new arts festival! Theme is: Who is the public? How is a culture made and who is it for?

Mail us for details! Please forward to creative types. Website goes live November 5th.

elephantnotes@yahoo.co.uk

—

Culture is never neutral!

😎

Council Is Boring on Heygate Again: Pointless Sealing Up of Walkways

Last week the Council contractors finished a week of totally pointless and presumably expensive activity on the Heygate Estate following their already vindictive and pointless attempts to remove the Heygate Community Gardens mural. A team of welders and sealer-uppers closed off the numerous walkways that people use to walk around, enjoy, have fun on, take pics from and leap off of in this as yet still piece of publicly-owned land. We have taken the pictures above from Alice C Macchi’s blog with thanks to her. As someone who enjoys running and leaping from walls on the estate, she points out in her piece that anyone who seeks to gain entry to estate for the wrong reasons will do so:

If you have a reason to be at the Heygate, putting up a barrier won’t deter you. If you have no reason to be there, it is likely that you will not be there anyway. These barriers are totally pointless. If anything they are more dangerous than safe. Usually a way in is also a way out. These barriers now block most exits and in case of danger or need there is no quick escape route. Why has council put these up before the entire estate is closed off is completely beyond me.

So these new barriers to the land are only really about slowly increasing the keeping out all the people who currently want to walk in sun and snow around the place, see the 450 trees and the mostly empty buildings, visit friends and picnic there, tend their vegetables and so on. All of those people who are never ever asked whether they actually want large welded barriers put in their way, the decision being made in some office entirely unaccountably (again).

We wonder at what level in the Council offices this waste of money and time was sanctioned?  For all the agreement and head nodding it has done over the last two years with local people who have sought to get them to realise how great the open space and old buildings are for temporary community uses, the Council seems intent on actually thwarting all the amazing things people are doing in the estate for themselves as part of the desire to provide amazing things for all.

What is particularly pathetic is that the welding shut of the walkways comes only a fortnight after the highly successful and fun for local kids Release The Wolves event where they went tearing around the Heygate walkways in mad self-souped up customised Go Karts! And this was sanctioned by the Council in the first place! Not only was the event fun fun fun, the old grey pre-cast concrete slabs of Heygate were given a right going over with colourful paintings! Simple question: Would you prefer the Heygate to walled off for years and to stand as a big grey lump or would you prefer to keep it lively and colourful?

Here‘s a link to the new somewhat bonkers paintwork up in Heygate!

UPDATE: 19th Sept
The Council released a statement today on their website stating that the blocking of the walkways is preparation for the demolition and also because of ‘a range of health and safety issues‘ (of course!). Needless to say no demolition can begin until the final leaseholders have moved off, this whole process subject to the recent CPO served and its legal challenges.

More Heygate Community Gardens paintings

Just a small selection from some of the other Heygate Community Gardens wall paintings and drawings that are dotted around the allotment area.

Oh and we can’t forget this great collaborative effort!

Community Restores Heygate Murals After Council Vandalism

After Wednesday’s appalling council vandalism of the Heygate Community Garden murals and graffiti, local gardeners, artists, ping-pong players and other lovers of the green public space spent the last few days waving their magic hands over the ugly grey paint and restoring the artworks back to life. The Chopstick Houses piece is nearly back to life.

Here are two of the murals that we hadn’t time to photograph before the Council decided that splashes of grey paint irregularly applied was nicer than these colourful images. The one on the right was even made by a kind of famous-ish Belgian street artist or so we heard!

The nice pink Elephant was the first to be restored back to good health. A few more waves of the magic hands and she will be as pink as she was before as will the artist who put so much time into painting her on the wall. Well done everybody.

Council Spitefully Vandalise Heygate Community Gardens

Yesterday the Council in its infinite and omnipotent wisdom decided to carry out another (1) aggressive attack on the popular Heygate Community Gardens by spitefully destroying the colourful and thought-provoking artworks that have been brightening up the dull spaces within. As part of  people’s amazing efforts to keep the place public and enjoyable local artists have been welcomed in to use the old walls of houses as canvases to paint murals, graffiti and street art on. As you can see from the pics these were a collection of lovely, considered and sometimes wry artworks created for the benefit of all.

Yesterday, under the direction of Andrew Ashaye (Heygate & Aylesbury Case Management Officer), the Council aggressively decided to return the walls back to uglier and now badly painted over blank walls once again.

It was noticeable that they mostly singled out for painting over the large and thoughtful pieces around the Community Gardens and pond. As you can see from above however the rest of the estate is still covered with scribbles, tags, obscenities and so on but these remained up after the Council had done it’s paint slapping. We ask the questions: What possible offence can be caused by the Heygate murals and with what mindset does the Council operate with to come and destroy local artists work without even any warning or debate?

LET THEM KNOW THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE: We suggest that if you feel that this was an unnecessary, wholly unaccountable and aggressive act that you make your feelings known to those who carried it out and to CC in your email Peter John and Fiona Colley, who are the leading Council lights in the Regeneration Dept.

Write to:
Andrew Ashaye – andrew.ashaye@southwark.gov.uk
Peter John – peter.john@southwark.gov.uk
Fiona Colley – fiona.colley@southwark.gov.uk

For more than two years local people have been using the green spaces within to put into practice what the Council has been twiddling their thumbs about and that is how the space within the Estate can be used for community benefit whilst the bureaucratic stages of regeneration grind ever slowly on. Called ‘interim use’ it means that instead of sealing up the giant forest within the Heygate to await demolition in two or three years time (2), the space is maintained for exactly the sort of the thing the Heygate Community Gardeners have been doing there all along.

Not only does the act of growing flowers and vegetables, giving out free allotments, keeping chickens, running a pond, having growing and planting days, seed swaps and also showing films and having small social events maintain exactly the kind of things that grows communities, it also acts as a deterrent to crime inside the Estate. Leaseholders living on the estate have not been burgled since the community activity started something that had been a regular occurrence before.

All of this local effort and hard work comes from a desire to actually see the Heygate site as still part of the public space of The Elephant area and to maintain the enjoyment to be had at wandering amongst the 400 plus mature trees inside. As part of these acts of growing and nurturing, the work done by artists inside the estate has been welcomed and enjoyed by all involved in the Community Gardens. They were an integral part of keeping a community spirit alive against the whims and anti-social behaviour the Council engages in that pretends to care about community benefits but by it’s actions shows nothing but contempt for local people and how they make this a much needed reality here and now.
—

NOTES:
(1) REPEAT AD NAUSEUM, AD ABSURDUM!
In March 2012, the Council came to the gardens and stole the pump for the pond and were threatening to remove all the exhibition stands and other objects by which we thought they meant the chairs and tables people use. It was pointed out to them that that ‘the council’s time and resources might be better spent on things including basic estate maintenance and cleaning‘. They argued that they would ‘continue to monitor the general health & safety on the site prior to demolition works taking place to ensure that the site also remains safe for the remaining residents‘. We had to laugh as the remaining residents are the only ones doing any actual looking after the site whilst the Council does nothing to the collapsing walls, holes in the paving and so on.

Before                                                           And After…

(2) OAKMAYNE DEVELOPERS ENCLOSE COMMUNITY PARK FOREVER!
This is exactly what is happening at the vast Oakmayne development site at New Kent Rd / Elephant Rd, right next door to Heygate. The site has now sat undeveloped for 6 years now. A couple of years ago without any local consultation The Council agreed to let Oakmayne destroy and seal off the popular open green space next door despite protests from local users and especially the Latino community who used it at weekends for football games. This part of the Elephant’s public lands now sits destroyed and enclosed as Oakmayne struggle to find the finances for the daftly-named Tribeca Square – New London scheme.