Acme’s scaled back proposals to cost a third less than previous plans and will be submitted within next two months
Network Rail will appoint a new development partner for its overhaul of Liverpool Street station after receiving planning permission, the boss of its property arm has said.
Robin Dobson said Network Rail Property is currently in discussions with “all development partners that are in and around the private sector market” on its radically different Acme-designed proposals for the station announced last week.
Firms the transport operator is talking still include Sellar and MTR, Network Rail’s partners on a former version of the scheme designed by Herzog & de Meuron which was aborted following a backlash from heritage groups.
Robin Dobson said Network Rail’s new team was working at ‘unprecedented’ speed to get the planning application ready for submission
But Dobson told Building that Network Rail was now “running the application ourselves” and a new development partner will not be appointed on the scheme until “post consent”.
“To get the right solution, we have taken, I think, the bold decision and the right decision to lead the application ourselves and to employ a new team,” Dobson said.
“We have taken stock over many months to work out how we best move forward with the project. We as Network Rail Property are leading the new application, and we are speaking with the developer market and the investment market as we would do with any application.”
He added: “That’s Network Rail Property’s focus, the new application.”
Dobson, who joined the business as group property director in 2022, said the new team was working at an “unprecedented” speed on its redesign of the station.
Plans are expected to be submitted within the next two months in what Dobson claimed would be “one of the fastest planning applications of a project of this scale and this complexity in the City of London”.
This could allow the new proposals to be assigned a planning committee date as soon as next summer, with Network Rail aiming to start construction within two years of the plans being approved.
Dobson also revealed new details of how the scheme differs from Sellar’s existing plans, submitted to the City last year, which proposed a 20-storey office tower controversially built above the grade II*-listed former Great Eastern Hotel.
Acme’s proposals would be significantly cheaper to build, coming in at a cost of around £1bn, a third less than the £1.5bn price tag attached to the Sellar scheme.
Cost savings would be achieved primarily through a more efficient construction programme which would not touch the listed hotel and retain more of the station’s 1980s extension.
The overstation office tower would also be reduced in size by three floors and contain around 650,000sq ft of floorspace, compared to the 800,000 sq ft building proposed by Sellar, and would no longer be cantilevered over the listed hotel.
Network Rail has been developing the new proposals, described by Dobson as “quite a move on from the previous application”, since the summer at the same time as Sellar and Herzog & de Meuron has been amending its own plans.
The latter’s original proposals were widely criticised by heritage groups including Historic England, which argued the scheme would “profoundly damage the character of the station as a whole” if built.
Concerns focused mainly on the impact of the scheme on the grade II-listed station, the adjacent listed hotel and on views of St Paul’s Cathedral.
The application amassed more than 2,200 objections from members of the public and was also recommended for refusal by two neighbouring councils, Westminster and Hackney.
Building Design first revealed Sellar and Herzog & de Meuron were making changes to their submitted scheme in May this year before further details of the now shelved redesign were outlined last month.
Network Rail’s new project team includes Aecom on engineering and transport, Certo as project manager, Gerald Eve on planning, Gleeds as cost manager, Donald Insall Associates on heritage and townscape, GIA on daylight and sunlight and SLA as landscape architect.
Scott Brownrigg, which had been working with Sellar as transport architect, is no longer working with Network Rail on the scheme.
No comments yet