Twenty-five years after the completion of its hallmark Canada Square tower, Canary Wharf still inspires both adulation and bile. For a man from the Evening Standard, London’s “Wall Street on the Water” has come of age: the restaurants are now rather good, you see. For others, it remains the exemplar of all that is fraudulent about regeneration hype. It’s not hard to see why: the Canary Wharf sashimi may be “melt-in-the-mouth”, yet somehow or other 49% of children in the borough where it’s prepared live in poverty. The ordinary people of the derelict Docklands seem not to have been invited to the feast.
The Canary Wharf Group has been big news of late due to Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund and Canadian property investor Brookfield gaining control of its biggest shareholder, an entity called Songbird which was itself created ten years ago in order to capture the Wharf. The £2.6bn takeover siege has kept devotees of such matters enthralled for weeks. But it’s business as usual, despite all the blood on the floor.
Sir George Iacobescu, the Romanian-born businessman who in 1987 advised his Canadian boss Paul Reichmann to steer clear of the place and a year later began work on building it, will proudly remain the group’s chief executive. Last month Tower Hamlets council gave permission for the development of the Wood Wharf site at the estate’s eastern edge. A cylindrical tower, designed by the creators of Beijing’s “birds nest” Olympic stadium, is planned to reach 57-storeys into the sky. One quarter of the intended 3,600 new homes will be (relatively) affordable. Sir George reckons it will nearly double the number of people working and living in that part of the Isle of Dogs within ten years. Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman hailed an “iconic addition” to the borough which he claimed will “generate thousands of jobs for local residents.”
Let’s hope he’s right. The number of people employed in the Wharf has risen from 27,000 to well over 100,000 since 2003, but figures produced by the Office for National Statistics in 2013 showed that barely one in ten were local. Jim Fitzpatrick, the area’s Labour MP, told the Financial Times that though firms relocating there had tended to bring their own staff, it should get easier in future for Tower Hamlets residents to get a job in a place which now contains more bankers than the Square Mile.
Iacobescu has pledged to do his bit and Canary Wharf has forged links with east London community groups, job-seekers and educational establishments. A lot of the newer positions are in retail and hospitality as the area’s malls enlarge and that sashimi content grows. These are not to be mocked, but there are still bridges to be built between the high achievements of Tower Hamlets and other East London schools and the higher end jobs in the Wharf. Last month I attended the launch of a campaign by the Tower Hamlets Education Business Partnership (THEBP) to increase the number of work experience places for local students provided by large Canary Wharf and the City firms to 750 a year. At present, such companies offer only 8% of the 3,000 required annually, according to THEBP. Could do better.
Some who celebrate the rise and rise of Canary Wharf underplay the vital importance of public investment, tax subsidies and pump-priming planning powers to getting the thing off the ground back in the 1980s when Michael Heseltine, who oversaw the enterprise, was Thatcherism’s Great Intervener. Iacobescu has described getting lost in a wasteland of Narrow Streets where there wasn’t even water or electricity. A dormant Docklands Light Railway was being assembled, though. Without that, all those lights and taps might never have been switched on. Since then, the Jubilee Line extension has powered further growth - far more than was envisaged at first. The advent of Crossrail is already fuelling the Wharf’s ride towards a rich and diversifying future. Its successes will radiate around the world. But how many of those 49% of children in poverty will be a part of that journey?
Update, February 2, 2015: The Tower Hamlets Education Business Partnership tells me it has now received 200 of the 750 work experience offers it is aiming for. Congratulations on that encouraging progress. This article has been enhanced post-publication to reflect a belated enhancement of the author’s knowledge of Japanese cuisine (which he isn’t keen on) .
