Monday, June 10, 2013

Wave goodbye to the Deptford train cafe


When building work finally commences in a couple of months' time on the delayed Cathedral/United House development next to Deptford station (see pic below), one of Deptford's most recent and best loved landmarks, the café known to locals as "the train", will have to move.

The café has been given notice to be off the site by 31st August, but a decision over where it will go must be made within the next week. Whilst Cathedral have offered to help with some of the relocation costs, another option is that they buy the train business and move it to Brighton, where they are 'delivering' an "Innovation Quarter". Meanwhile, the café staff have been given notice, as have the creative business tenants in the arches, who have been offered space in Canning Town.





The train café was originally planned to be moved to sit alongside the new station – the perfect place for it. It appears on this model which was viewed during the 'consultation' (though was missing from the application drawings).

There is certainly plenty of room for it here. There is also room here for a nice big anchor.


But Network Rail own the land in front of the station and they have said the train café would compromise the franchises they want to put in their arches, eg their corporate partners Costa Coffee. Surely the developers must have known this might be the case when they submitted their plans?

Might the train go here instead, under the Mr & Mrs mural?


No, Lewisham Council says the train is too heavy. The anchor was also considered to be too heavy to go here. Watch out the pavement doesn't cave in next time you walk on it!

Could it perhaps go here, in Douglas Square? Or are there other vested interests vying for this space? If it can't go here, then it's goodbye to the train cafe.



Update 20th June 2013: Still no news on the train's new home, or if it can stay. Some of the displaced artists and creative businesses may relocate to Tidemill, but nothing is confirmed.

Update 29th June: ditto above.



CREATIVE DEPTFORD AND THE DEVELOPERS

The marketing pitch of all developers is that Deptford is a thriving creative community, yet these days a great many of Deptford's creatives are actually homeless. Businesses are being chucked out of Faircharm to make way for luxury apartments, Utrophia's temporary time on the high street is up just as soon as Antic get their planning sorted, and the artists in St Paul's House must also move out at the same time as those in the Deptford Project yard.

Lewisham Council, which enjoys the vast amounts of Section 106 money that comes from these developments to spend in other parts of the borough, also trades on Deptford's creative reputation whilst failing to ensure there is adequate accommodation for the people that created the reputation. The Council have just re-signed the contract for Newbould Guardians to stay at the old Tidemill school – a property that could accommodate a hundred creatives yet only houses about ten, at enormous expense to Lewisham's taxpayers whilst making a tidy profit for a private security firm.

Cathedral plc say on their website: "In summer 2008 we installed a 1960s commuter train carriage into a site next to Deptford High Street train station in south east London. We put it there to kickstart a £42m mixed-use PPP regeneration scheme with the London Borough of Lewisham in partnership with United House...The Deptford Project Café has become a popular place with Deptford locals. Lovingly restored by neighbourhood craftsmen and run by a local group, the café acts as a creative hub for the community and as the focal point for The Deptford Project. It has been featured in media all over the world and was hailed as London’s grooviest new café. Vogue magazine included The Deptford Project Café in their top 50 favourite things in London....We continued our placemaking by opening up the abandoned arches under the carriage ramp and letting them on a temporary basis to local craftspeople. They have built a vibrant community there..."

But now we're chucking them all out!

United House, who call the site Deptford Rise, say "it is a £60m PPP project to include 138 private homes, new public space, live/work units and office space for small, creative organisations. The Deptford Project is already established as a thriving and quirky community initiative where features include a cafe in a disused train carriage, pop-up markets and an outdoor cinema in summer."

So the people who have built the vibrant community, who have helped to create Deptford's reputation as a creative hub, must fuck off so that new creative spaces (which no one will be able to afford) can be built. The creative scene in Deptford is down to two main factors: Goldsmiths College and cheap space. The latter is now only available as a result of temporary spaces created by developers while they thrash out the details of their luxury home developments with Lewisham Planning. The only creatives who can survive the onslaught of the developers in relative security are those who can afford to own their buildings.

There could be a smoother transition from temporary to permanent in these situations, but there is not. What makes an area unique in the first place is disregarded and unsupported when it's time to sell the luxury flats to overseas investors (see Alternative SE4's latest post). The Deptford X visual arts festival only gets support from developers when they are sucking up to Lewisham Planning in the initial stages. Never mind, eh, creative people are a sturdy bunch used to living on the edge in total insecurity, and those who find themselves having to leave are soon replaced by the next batch of plucky graduates, a factor that the developers are relying on. There is no "now", there is only "the future". In the future, all creatives are envisaged as operating solely in the digital world, where space is virtual.

The buzzword for developers and planners is Placemaking. This is originally defined (since the 70s) as capitalising on a local community's assets, inspiration and potential "to create good public spaces that promote health, happiness and well being". There is indeed now much capitalising on the community's assets – in this case, 'Creative Deptford' – in order to drive up the value of new luxury apartments and increase the profits of the developer.

The main driver for the massive Convoys Wharf development is Deptford's "creative" reputation. The fact that the site has enormous historical significance is more or less disregarded since preserving and celebrating that aspect would get in the way of building 3,500 flats (3000 of which are likely to be marketed to foreign investors). Heritage is mainly to be acknowledged in place naming only. In its "Cultural Strategy" the developer states that their plans will make Deptford "the new Shoreditch" whilst conveniently forgetting that that part of the East End is located right next to the wealthy City of London, and hundreds of creatives had to move out before all the new trendy people could move in.

Still, in the time it takes for the Convoys site to be built (some twenty years or more), there may be opportunities for cheapish temporary spaces, but not for some time to come, so this will be little comfort for those caught in the present developer-led transition. Such is the poisoned chalice of regeneration.



34 comments:

  1. it's a cynical deliberate strategy by developers / council in cahoots under the name of regeneration. Happened in New York, happened in the Northern Quarter in Manchester and now Deptford.

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  2. This is such a shame. If it can't stay in Deptford it should at least stay in Lewisham. Catford perhaps? Loads of empty space there...

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  3. Would be a shame to lose Deptford Project Cafe! Where will I go for my flat white? Lewisham council should really help keep it in Deptford. The Train carriage cafe and the anchor has been a great trademark for Deptford! Thus it should stay.

    If not in the high street - it should be placed nearby. Outside the Waldron Health Centre? or Douglas way Square?

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  4. noooooooooooooooooooo!!! they surely cannot get rid of our beloved train... is bad enough to lose our anchor. someone has to start a petition to keep it in the area. what about the disused walled and fenced green space and square of Reginald square?

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  5. Brilliant article. Maddening, absoloutely, maddenig, and it really is at the heart of the community I've become so fond of over six years living here

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  6. There surely must be a way of making Giffin Square strong enough to take the weight of the train. It would look brilliant there. We neeeeed it.

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  7. Agree totally with Maria Livings. I remember the train being lowered in on a huge crane. Deptford was excited. Keep the train, as trains are a vital part of our heritage.

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  8. Developers in Victoria and East London are realizing the importance of such arty, trendy local amenities in selling their new flats/letting office space and are now actually encouraging such places, not moving them on. This cafe is an icon for Deptford and really must stay there - how can the local developers/the Council not find a sliver of land for it somewhere in SE8? God knows there are enough desolate spots which would benefit from such a great visual addition. How short-sighted. If SE8 cant find a home for it can we have it in Brockley please?!

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  9. this is an old tactic, as Gralizer Tizmarsh said, its happened Lower East Side manhattan and elsewhere. We need to make art and stuff that is less compliant, less ready to 'include' the requests and suggestions of the very people who want to exploit us, more confrontational; this will mean eschewing 'funding' and some opportunities to share work that is anyway already compromised. the train and the anchor are just physical manifestations of a process that has been in development for at least 15 years here in Deptford, I remember the skin crawling absurdity of McDonald Egan property developers handing out a cheque for the winner of their Deptford X prize. Sleep walking.

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  10. Could be that the artists and other 'creatives' who've been used by the developers as Trojan Horses, as astroturf, are realising they don't have the privileges they thought they did? Cheap cheerleaders, bought by Cathedral Group for a pop-up hipster mirage. Gralizer Titchmarsh and Charles are right.

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    1. Poetry! They paved paradise and put up a parking lot!

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  11. POP-UP HIPSTER MIRAGE is a good name for a refusenik festival.

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  12. Well put, San, but the point I probably failed to make here, is that the train cafe is run by a local person, born and bred here. It is a slightly different case to artists' temporary studio space, but not unlike the creative businesses that must vacate Faircharm.

    Although the train cafe was for some time (and still is, it seems), perceived by the more cynical (or perceptive) members of the community to be taking the developer's dollar – a mere pop-up advert for the developer – it had also been promised a future home as a viable local business and asset to the high street, so that Deptford would continue to benefit from its presence.

    The community hasn't a hope in hell of stopping these new luxury home developments, but successful initiatives from locals like the train cafe, to work with developers as they thrust these changes upon us, should be assured a future, and not abandoned once the building work starts. To some extent, Network Rail is the main culprit here, but their unwillingness to work with communities and Councils etc is well known and should have been perceived from the start.

    The Movement cafe (aka MVMNT, yuk) on Greenwich High Road is another example of Cathedral's sucking up to the community, but without the Olympics bringing visitors past its facade (which it was designed to cash in on), it was pretty unviable in that location and was easily dismantled. It was also run by an organisation (GDCA) that has its thumbs in LOTS of pies round here, whose management hadn't sunk their personal life savings into the business, not having been promised a future beyond the development.

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    1. MVMT put a message on its Facebook page today announcing that the cafe was coming down and being moved to Brighton. Just a Coincidence that Deptfords Train Carriage may also be going to Brighton?? Me think not.

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    2. It came down over a month ago at least. Suspected it might be going to re-emerge where the anchor was, since a coffee kiosk is promised for that location. GDCA are linked with the high street renovations and are good at pop-ups, wonder if they need more than temporary planning permission to put up something similar at top of high street...

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  13. a lot of the creatives who are the subject of this thread are local people, if not originally then by choice, and that is part of what makes the Deptford creative thing so special, it sort of naturally becomes folk art, which is both a privilege and a responsibility. we must refuse the 'Queen's shilling' and use our work to fuel resistance against our manipulation by money.

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  14. It would be a very real pity to see it go, and especially so if, as Sue puts it "it had also been promised a future home as a viable local business and asset to the high street, so that Deptford would continue to benefit from its presence." The additional regret would be for those people losing a livelihood.

    But how can we stop initiatives like this, which by definition don't generate big bucks, from being moved on?

    I'm not saying 'bend over and take it' - I am asking what could realistically be done and how?

    Might the influence that co-ops like GCDA have actually help reach a better solution? In the face of mighty developers and intractable landlords, the help of a locally influential organisation be useful rather than a hindrance no?

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  15. The pity is that even if developers chose to respond on a local blog (like this excellent blog) – and you can bet they keep tabs on blogs when they're 'pitching' for the area – they wouldn't change their minds *one little bit* - it makes no difference to them what 'locals' think.

    and those dreadful colours they're splattering all over buildings - like the ones up Lewisham Road (road leading from the bottom of Blackheath Hill to Lewisham) - they're APPALLING - what's in the planners mind when they agree this sort of rubbish? It little better than the token bits of wood they attach to building in the hope of making them seem 'green' - in a couple of months the wood will look dirty and tired.

    Oh, but the developers will have buggered off by then . . .

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    1. Agreed! These new developments resemble disposable housing, designed to look 'modern' for 20-30 years and then be torn down and replaced. Hideous!

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    2. 20-30 years! well, 2-4 years might be nearer the mark!

      ;)

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    3. Sadly yes - a couple of years of looking OK at most.

      I guess the pressure on housing in London is so great that flats are what sells, add to that the perverse incentives from centrral government and hey presto ...

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    4. The pressure on housing in London is not being solved by only 14-15% affordable housing, many of these flats are sold "off-plan" to overseas investors. A large percentage of the construction jobs go to Eastern Europeans, some of whom work here as bonded labour for gangmasters.

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    5. Read AlternativeSE4's post on who is buying all these flats.
      http://alternativese4.com/2013/06/09/overseas-buyers-snap-up-lewisham-new-homes/

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  16. Deptford is at its most special when the people who actually LIVE here get a say in their own home. Successful, creative and positive community places, like this, are worth urgent reconsideration. I wish £, being passed back and forth, backhander style, would stop killing positive social heritage, especially in an era when it is needed most.

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  17. I am devastated. This train has been sooooo loved by all and has become such a part of the locality. So sad....

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  18. It's an appalling state of affairs. Not only is this a great local resource, beloved by all, but also a nod to the part the railway has played in Deptford's history. The first suburban railway line in London was the London Bridge to Greenwich line. The cattle destined for the Deptford Cattle Market were brought to the station before being dismembered by the Gut Girls. It may be a coincidence that the carriage is in the High Street but it's a very neat one. Can't we get it moved to where the anchor was if that's not going back? I agree that Douglas Square would be great. Just don't understand this decision. Very sad.

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  19. @Ali, it's a great image...all these cows on a train maybe a few sheep in first class but the Cattle Market was London's foreign cattle market. The cattle came from overseas by ship and were landed directly into the port controlled market, now Convoys. Disease control assured that the overseas cattle from Argentina, the U.S., Australia, landed by ship at the market, would never be permitted leave the market alive. ; )

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  20. The efforts of the individual will always be subservient and secondary to the principle of profit.
    Long live capitalism!

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  21. what are you all expecting of developers? this is what happens when you associate with them, they are there just for the profit, Costa coffee is probably paying a lot, we shouldbe blaming that silly train for having opening the doors for them

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    1. Doors would be open anyway, that much is clear from Network Rail. Silly developers made such a big show in the first place in order to garner popularity for their eventually dumbed down Rodgers development. It went on for ages, it was no "pop-up"...

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  22. too much enphasis and hope is put in those artists and creative types, we sem to forget that the art industry is just another industry that moves thanks to money, why should they have more rights than other workers, or their activities being promoted, i particularly work towards promoting cooperatives and businesses owned by its workers, the same about housing, more self build housing cooperatives and less developers, in Deptford the train and the artists were working for the developers hoping they would get something out of it, when the Deptford project is done anything for the community? remember that cinema when they were showing bad 80's films and you had to sit in pallets and pay £10?

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    1. Yes, artists move thanks to money, but not in the direction you mean it. Generally artists tend to settle in more run down areas, particularly where there is underexploited industrial space for use as studios. As art communities establish themselves, this then attracts the property developers. Rents rise, space disappears, and builders move in. And once again those ''creative types'' are forced to move to the next best thing. Thanks to money.

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    2. that art you talk about is too friendly and cooperative with big businesses, i know those studios, and the Deptford Project case is the best example of artists associated with a big business

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    3. I totally agree with Anon that the regeneration model used by developers (arts led) is defunkt, and agree with Marmoset that there is no money in it for artists.

      Unless Hutchison Whampoa promise a first class galeria of artistic activity in the Olympia Building at Convoys Wharf, sponsored entirely by them, the same pattern will repeat itself. Presently, Hutchison Whampoa are sucking up to local arts related organisations but nothing is promised. They just want to use local arts projects to make themselves look good.

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