When great chunks of a London neighbourhood face dramatic redevelopment, it is customary for residents to bristle. We all hate the idea of change, particularly when it’s thrust upon us by property developers.
And even when that change is desperately needed and ultimately positive – such as the recent transformation of King’s Cross – we still mourn the loss of the old environment, getting misty-eyed about all its historic quirks and faults.
Yet Kentish Town is perhaps unique in the capital for being home to a large area, right at its centre, which every local would love to see given a proper seeing to by the redevelopers.
The Regis Road estate is the last bit of designated industrial land remaining in the whole of Camden. Today it sits windswept and oddly quiet, cut off from most of our daily routines behind closed roads and busy railway lines. But it is huge – 7.5 hectares in fact, plus another 6.8 hectares of construction company Murphy’s yard – forming an almost criminally underused swathe of prime space in a city desperate to make use of every spare inch.
Soon though, this incongruous status quo will finally start to change. Late last year we broke a story when the TV studios of JML (birthplace of those “take yours to checkout now” in-store videos for “miracle” household gadgets) was sold, for £8.8m, to a company called Augustus Land, run by a north Londoner with a vision for the future of this slice of NW5.
Darren Reiss has lived nearby all his life, while his family’s eponymous fashion retail chain, Reiss, has grown to become a feature of high streets across the UK and beyond. As plans for his renovation of the studios from the current corrugated carbuncle to a swish office complex to be known as The Shed emerged, we thought we should track him down to hear more.
“There are not many areas in London where I see real growth potential,” he tells us over a coffee, “but Kentish Town is definitely one of them. And it happens to be an area that I absolutely love too.”
He’s particularly struck by the neighbourhood’s obvious assets – and also by what it currently lacks. “You’ve got great period properties, pretty terraces, loads of transport links, but a real shortage of office space as highlighted by the success of Highgate Studios. And then there’s this largely unused, barren wasteland sitting right opposite the tube. It’s crazy. It’s a simply cracking location, and if you had to stick a pin on a map, it’s exactly where you’d want your office to be.”
Darren is keen to stress that he’s no ‘hard-nosed’ property developer sweeping into town to make a quick buck. In fact he’s only worked in the property game around four years, but he’s witnessed the new optimistic spirit around here, and clearly wants in. As formerly run-down shop units have filled with independent retailers, savvy restaurant operators like Soho House have moved in, and high-end residential projects such as the forthcoming Maple Building arrive, K-Town’s forgotten hinterland of Regis Road is becoming a very tasty prospect indeed.
“My motivation as a local is to play a part in the further enhancement of the area,” he says. “Having watched it change so drastically in recent years, I’m really excited about that. Sometimes you get buyer’s remorse when you purchase a building, sleepless nights wondering if you’ve done the right thing, but I haven’t got that with this one. We got our change of use easily, so it shows the Council’s body language for changing the area. We want help build a thriving new creative neighbourhood here, like has happened in Shoreditch or the way King’s Cross has been totally transformed. It’s important that Kentish Town doesn’t lose its DNA along the way though, the industrial heritage that makes the area unique. We don’t want it to become too glossy, as then it would lose its particular appeal.”
So far so good, right? But of course, Reiss currently owns just one building, and though the recently approved KTNF Neighbourhood Plan has designs on revamping the estate too, how joined-up is the whole thing going to be? And isn’t there a danger it will all simply take decades?
“Well, everyone from the current freeholders to the Council to the residents are pushing in the same direction,” says Darren. “There are all the ingredients for change, but I’m not sure how long it will take. If other properties became available at the right price, then I’d clearly interested in acquiring if the deal made sense. I do see the Murphy site changing one day too, but obviously it’s out of my hands.”
Meanwhile, his new purchase is about to be stripped back and re-clad ahead of opening as The Shed next March, bringing what he intends to be plenty more creative types in to the area every day, in turn supporting the healthy growth of our local eco-system of shops, bars and restaurants.
And as he points out, “Kentish Town is fairly unique for London, in that it actually doesn’t have a shortage of space.” Now all we have to do is start making more use of it.
