Revised masterplan for the 40-acre scheme is now moving towards becoming a planning application with construction to begin in 2026.
Details of Phase One of the new regeneration scheme for Earl’s Court were recently released by the Earls Court Development Company (ECDC), promising over 1,000 new homes of various kinds, an office building, a cultural venue and a 4.5 acre park to be created from part of what is left of the otherwise demolished Earls Court exhibition centre.
They published plans are the step preceding submission of complementary planning applications to Hammersmith & Fulham Council and its neighbour Kensington & Chelsea in the summer, with construction work expected to begin in 2026. The boundary between the two boroughs runs through the middle of the development site, from north to south.
The Hammersmith & Fulham part of the 40 acre scheme will comprise 290 homes for market sale in a 42-storey tower, 180 affordable‚ dwellings in a 17-storey block and around 680 rooms of student accommodation in a 31-storey building.
On the Kensington & Chelsea side, 200 market sales homes are pencilled in and around 100 affordable‚.
In height terms, this is in one way a scaled down vision compared with an earlier version. In November, ECDC announced changes to their earlier masterplan including a reduction in building heights by 10 per cent and in the number of homes envisaged for the entire project from 4,500 to around 4,000, with a target of 35 per cent of these being affordable.
The park at the heart of the project is to be called Table Park after the raised strip of surviving infrastructure upon which part of the younger of the two exhibition centre buildings, Earls Court 2, stood and beneath which runs the West London rail line, carrying Southern and London Overground services. A bespoke structural solution‚ is required to pull this off and end up with a green space larger than Trafalgar Square including a decked link to West Brompton station.
You can read all about the Phase One designs and other project proposals here. You can listen to the documentary podcast about the Earl’s Court scheme I researched, wrote and presented for the London Society last year as part of its London Explained series.
Words by Dave Hill, editor and publisher of OnLondon
