Open up the Westminster University Cavendish fortress

As a longtime resident and indeed native of the neighbourhood, I hurried to the presentation of the University of Westminster’s large-scale redevelopment plan for the “Cavendish Block” on New Cavendish and Hanson Street. I had high hopes that this publicly-funded institution with its self-proclaimed social mission would design its new “student hub” with stimulating and creative improvements to the public realm for its surrounding community, i.e., us! Oh boy, was I disappointed.

The plan calls for a new fortress facade on the mini-block at the northern end of Hanson Street to replace Latimer House, accessible only by turnstile to students and staff. As many locals will attest, we have seen a progression of large development projects that make walking along the eastern end of New Cavendish Street like taking a stroll through a motorway underpass. No regard has been shown for the street-level life that most of us inhabit. The University of Westminster now wants to extend that lifeless wind-tunnel around the corner onto Hanson Street.

There is a massive opportunity to revivify these few grim blocks of our neighbourhood, linking the recently upgraded northern blocks of Cleveland Street and the soon-to-be-upgraded street level of the BT Tower when it becomes a hotel, to the restaurant scene of Great Titchfield Street and Foley Street. But the University of Westminster apparently wants to ensure that the currently dead mini-block at the north end of Hanson Street, notable only for the Royal Mail collection office and a car-park entrance, will remain dead for decades more. It proposes a glass sheet with a single high-security entrance.

Although I have lived in the neighbourhood for almost forty years I had never before been inside the late-Sixties, Brutalist “Cavendish Block.” I feel sorry for the students who congregate on its steps and at the handkerchief-sized public spaces on two corners of New Cavendish Street and Cleveland Street. But it turns out there is actually a large courtyard inside the block to which the public has no access. The new plan will provide a new turnstiled entrance for students to this courtyard from Hanson Street, but the public will remain barred.

In recent years, we have seen large-scale developments in our area provide very successful public access to private courtyards: both in Pearson Square (Fitzroy Place) and at Rathbone Square. If these private developers can manage to offer this to the community, surely a publicly-funded institution can do the same, allowing the public into its well-shielded courtyard, too.

The University argues that it will be improving the public realm by providing 1.5 metres of extra pavement width for an approximately 30 metre stretch of northern Hanson Street where the Latimer House ramp is today. But that is simply a convenience for the University since it plans to demolish the ramp and build the new building on the same line as the existing Latimer House. When I suggested that the University could at least incorporate some bench seating or even possibly a cafe to revive street life on the mini-block, I was met not just with opposition but outright hostility.

Eventually, I was reduced to explaining to the architect, a university representative and a planning consultant presenting the project that all I was looking for was something “reasonable for the community.”

My suggestion fell upon deaf ears, despite the University of Westminster’s mission statement containing all the right buzzwords: “inclusivity,” “diversity,” “sustainability,” and “social justice.”

Trying to be helpful, I made a suggestion that the university seek the closure of the lightly-used southbound lane of the northernmost mini-block of Hanson Street to create seating and public space for students and locals alike. (I know it is lightly used because I have cycled southbound on that block once or twice a day for many years and almost never encounter another vehicle travelling in the same direction.)

London has seen the recent closure of the Strand at Aldwych outside King’s College to create a successful public space. If we can close the Strand, one of London’s great thoroughfares for centuries, to create a public space outside a university, then surely we can do the same by pedestrianising the southbound lane of this mini-block of Hanson Street (between Clipstone and New Cavendish Streets) while maintaining northbound access to the Royal Mail office and the car-park entrance. That would help revivify those lonely streets around the bottom of the BT Tower.

I hope our neighbours and Westminster councillors take a pro-active interest in the University of Westminster’s self-serving plan, which will leave our area moribund for decades. A new “student hub” should be a cause of celebration and a golden opportunity for the university to engage with its neighbours and surroundings.

I suggest the following ideas:

1. The University should allow public access to its courtyard through the new Hanson Street entrance in the same way that Pearson Square and Rathbone Square do, but restricting turnstile access to the university buildings themselves;
2. The southbound lane of the mini-block of Hanson Street between Clipstone and New Cavendish Streets should be pedestrianised and provided with seating and new greenery for public and students; 
3. The new university shop, selling University of Westminster merchandise, which will be accessible only from inside the lobby of the planned new frontage, should be open to the street and partially converted to a cafe or a store of wider use to the community, much like the cafe in the BBC’s forecourt on Langham Place.

I am sure the public and the Council will have additional ideas that could improve this lamentably inward-looking scheme.

The University of Westminster held two exhibitions of its redevelopment plans for Latimer House on Hanson Street in May and September this year. The University is expected to submit a formal planning application to Westminster Council in due course. For more information, see: University of Westminster Cavendish Block public consultation.

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